An article in today's Toronto Sun on putting bike lanes on Yonge St. from Sheppard to Finch both ways. This will kill stores and restaurants on this strip. It's being pushed by city planner Jennifer Keesmat and councillor John Filion and it's been kept fairly quiet. The 2 streets that should be considered for bike lanes are Doris Ave. on the east and Beecroft Ave. on the west both running from Sheppard to Finch and without retail and offices. Leave Yonge St. as a main arterial road and where people can park in off-peak hours. It looks to become Filion's pet legacy project.
If you oppose this idea contact John Filion- email- councillor_filion@toronto.ca

First community information night scheduled for the evening of Wednesday, May 25 (5-8 PM) at North York Memorial Hall (5110 Yonge Street). Detailed plans should be in place by sometime next year, with construction to begin in 2018.

Is North York's quiet $51M plan nothing more than a 'vanity project'? | LEVY | T
 
constructo said:
An article in today's Toronto Sun on putting bike lanes on Yonge St. from Sheppard to Finch both ways. This will kill stores and restaurants on this strip. It's being pushed by city planner Jennifer Keesmat and councillor John Filion and it's been kept fairly quiet. The 2 streets that should be considered for bike lanes are Doris Ave. on the east and Beecroft Ave. on the west both running from Sheppard to Finch and without retail and offices. Leave Yonge St. as a main arterial road and where people can park in off-peak hours.
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How does that figure? Green P already provides nearly 1,000 spots in NYCC parking lots, while Yonge only has ~400 on-street parking spots. You can also park along most of Beecroft or Doris (300-400 spots each), or any of the connecting streets. The residential streets also have free parking in the evenings and on weekends.

There's a lot I agree with in the article - there are a lot of selfish reasons for certain political groups to push for this project, there's a lot of bureaucrats working on this who've probably never set foot outside of the city core, and the bike lanes aren't going to be heavily used because they're cut off by ravines on three sides - but parking isn't a concern IMO. A real concern to me would be their plan to eliminate left turns from Yonge to Sheppard (both NB -> WB and SB -> EB). That might actually be extremely disruptive.
 
Last week the 2017 budget came out for the Commercial units. Our maintenance fees increased by 113% to 3.17 dollars/month. Keep in mind there are other costs too like mortgage and taxes. The residential side only had an increase of 12%.

The budgets reasoning for such a sharp increase was very vague citing that the mall has issues and repairs that have to be dealt with. When management is asked for specifics you are ignored.

We've gone ahead and formed an owners group to organize. It's only the second year this mall is open and already there are such issues. If you are a commercial or office unit owner here please feel free to contact me.

There is a possibility that the commercial board is already corrupt. They too when asked for specifics cite vague details. There is also a possibility that someone external or internal is trying to kill the mall.
 
The shoddy quality of construction may be at least partly to blame. On that note, the elevator at the subway entrance is out again. This is the 4th time since opening I believe.
 

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So we had a spontaneous unofficial meeting yesterday in the food court at 7:30pm. Two directors were present as they explained each item on the budget and cleared up a lot of the confusion as to why there is such a huge increase. Around 35 people were present in total.

Basically:

In the first fiscal year (last year) Bazis did not make us pay 100% of the maintenance fees. They made us pay around 50% of the real fees then took the hit for the rest. This was to make the units look cheaper to maintain so the purchasers won't bail. This also made it more attractive for tenants to set up shop here. Once final closing ended they continued to take the hit and will stop doing so next month which is the start of the next fiscal year. All condo developers do this to make their units look more attractive and to minimize defaults. In reality if Bazis did not take the hit and we paid 100% of the real costs to maintain the mall it would be really a 9% increase, not 113%.

Bazis also signed us up for a really exploitative HVAC maintenance contract. Since Bazis was only going to pay the HVAC guys for one year, they left no limit as to how high the HVAC guys could increase their fees each year. So it is the second year of the 5 year HVAC contract and the guys increased their fees from 41K to 120K, a 300% increase. Reasons cited were that the HVAC system is old (3 years old). Terminating the contract would be very expensive and even if we do the new guys we hire will have to learn where everything is all over again since the system is hidden behind the ceiling. The board plans on hiring a lawyer to deal with this.

Bazis also cut a lot of corners especially with the HVAC system. The entire system needs to be redone. The board plans on hiring a lawyer to make them redo everything.

The second floor of Metro & LCBO is also shafting us on shared facility fees by making us pay more this year to maintain the escalator, loading docks(which only they can use) and second floor common areas. These fees went up from 182K to 346K. The board plans on hiring a lawyer to make them pay their fair share.

The biggest surprise we all faced was the 822% increase in hydro fees from 54K to 447K. Reasons given for this increase was that either someone was stealing our electricity or that the incandescent lights are costing us big money every year. The board plans on hiring an engineer to investigate. There are also plans to replace all the lights with LED. Some lights like the lights in the food court cannot be replaced by LEDs because the trees in the food court (which take 7K a year to water) need them to survive.

The doors actually do not cost 3K each to repair but actually 25K. Bazis did not install them correctly with the strong winds in mind so we will also hire a lawyer for this.

They also want to extend Bonnie's hours from 2 days/week to 3.5 days/week even though she doesn't do anything but send out emails about fire alarms.

My increase was small in comparison to some of the larger units. The Yonge street frontage units saw an increase of 2100/month per unit to a total monthly maintenance payment of 3600.

A lot of the business owners here when I told them the news replied that if maintenance fees were to increase by this much then they would close up. We plan on opposing this budget and may be ousting FirstServices residential in favor of another management company.
 
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Bill, thanks for that update. Something smells rotten here. Sounds like someone is giving the owners some poor excuses for steep increases in Hydro; "someone is stealing your electricity or incandescent lights are costing big money." That's b.s. as you've probably already assumed. A 100 watt incandescent bulb at 10 cents per kwh costs 1 cent per hour to operate. Most owners are already using fluorescent or led's at a lower cost plus it's light from 6:30 AM until 8:30 PM. so not much electricity is being used by bulbs.
You might look into the experience of owners at Crystal Blu completed in 2012 to see if there's any Bazis pattern of malfeasance here. Keep us posted as things progress.
 
I don't think crystal blu has retail condos. I will look instead into the fees at World on Yonge and Aura.
 
An office unit owner came into my store today. I didn't have his phone number on Tuesday so I was unable to invite him to the meeting. This particular unit owner specializes in Utilities auditing and consulting, they basically go through a companies hydro bills and look for unreasonable costs to save the company money. He has been trying to see the Emerald Park utilities books for 6 months now but Tanisha for some reason will not show him. When he goes to ask a director he also does not do anything even though directors can look at the books at any given time. Through the auditor consultant's infinite wisdom he believes that management is getting kickbacks because there is no way there should be an increase of 882% in utilities costs. When he tries to do an audit he is stonewalled by Tanisha and the directors.

The budget was made by management.

It is highly likely the board and management company is corrupt. There will be another meeting next Friday (update: it is now postponed) same place, same time as the last one where the auditor will give a presentation about his findings. All tenants and unit owners are encouraged to come.
 
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Management after a request by a director has agreed to an audit in June. There will also be a meeting between management and Enercare in May to discuss the utilities budget after which a report will be made. The director has requested to management, on my suggestion, to include the utilities auditor in the meeting. It is best to wait and see what comes up after the meeting between Enercare, management and hopefully the utilities auditor before conducting the second unofficial meeting.

The meeting next Friday is postponed.

The new management fee will also be charged next week which should bring some confused owners to come to the mall in search of answers. I will try to inform as many as possible to increase the next meetings size.
 
They are separate condo corporations. Floor two is also a separate corporation as is the parking levels.
 
Bill123 said:
They are separate condo corporations. Floor two is also a separate corporation as is the parking levels.
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Interesting. But how do you handle issues that are joint between residents and commercial, such as the plumbing risers and stacks?

Also, who are the owners of the parking level?
 
The elevator by the subway tunnel finally being fixed today. Spoke to the repair guy. Not a botched installation defect as I suspected but a manufacturing defect in the guide rail system, covered by warranty. A misalignment caused the elevator to resist vertical movement which would trigger oil pressure faults and automatic shut downs.
 
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