Minto Freed Development - Details now available and it's NOT pretty

The Minto Freed development at the corner of Bathurst & Front has been submitted to the city for a re-zoning. The development is completely out of scale with the surrounding neighbourhood. More important from a planning perspective, the development is asking for 2x more density that is allowable under the City's Zoning By-law. The proposal shows >960 parking spaces with the entrance and exit on Niagara Street. Loading and unloading is off of Front Street. There is a larger amount of retail and >360 parking spaces are for the commercial part of the project.

There is no reason given why the City should allow this amount of density of parking in this neighbourhood. The developers have not responded to any of the comments expressed by community. The developers have shown no community benefits.

Stay tuned.
 
leejay said:
The Minto Freed development at the corner of Bathurst & Front has been submitted to the city for a re-zoning. The development is completely out of scale with the surrounding neighbourhood. More important from a planning perspective, the development is asking for 2x more density that is allowable under the City's Zoning By-law. The proposal shows >960 parking spaces with the entrance and exit on Niagara Street. Loading and unloading is off of Front Street. There is a larger amount of retail and >360 parking spaces are for the commercial part of the project.


There is no reason given why the City should allow this amount of density of parking in this neighbourhood. The developers have not responded to any of the comments expressed by community. The developers have shown no community benefits.

Stay tuned.
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beauty is in the eye of the beholder. you forgot to mention the almost 1000 bike spaces that are included. In regards to the parking, the city required almost 800 spaces of parking for this development. Normally people have a beef about the lack of parking, but they went over by over 100 spaces.
 
Parking should only be for 50% or less for development these days in the city core.

If you don't, you will keep adding to the gridlock that exist today.

Now, if that old Front St transit line still exist today, it will have a impact on moving riders to the downtown than the car.

The face of Sherwin Williams should be built into this development as too many are been lost to plain glass walls.
 
UrbanPrincess said:
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. you forgot to mention the almost 1000 bike spaces that are included. In regards to the parking, the city required almost 800 spaces of parking for this development. Normally people have a beef about the lack of parking, but they went over by over 100 spaces.
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1000 bike spaces - that is way overkill as I would bet that maybe 100 spaces will get used max every day during the bike season.

As for the car traffic, that is the nightmare coming. This site is huge and can handle alot of parking spaces due to its footprint. The roads around here only have so much capacity. This one sounds like Minto and Freed want to choke up the roads by overdeveloping their site.

Go on King Street tomorrow tonight west of Spadina and watch the fun. King/Bathurst intersection to be closed for nearly 3 weeks starting today/tonight.
S'Bus
 
The one thing I follow closely on my website for projects is the parking and bike spots in ratio to the units. Where I can get that info, it does not bear well for the existing traffic either for today or the future.

I have seen the numbers of bike spots starting to increase in the past year to the point they far out number cars.

I have seen new buildings trying to find spaces for bikes that were never allow for or have exceeded the spots.

There are buildings/owners trying to lease parking spaces since there are less cars than plan for.

In many places people are moving to areas where transit is good and getting out of the car.

I gave up the car over 10 years ago and use transit 100%. The only time I use a car is for going out of town, dealing with a client that is off the transit network or a real need for it.

TTC is doing their fine mess for the next few weeks on King St considering haft the line already on detour. Great planning brought to you by ""Transit Trample Customers""
 
I drove up Bathurst from Front to the 401 on Saturday night at around 11:30 and it was a nightmare. I know what you mean about the traffic.

in regards to the bike parking, that is based on Toronto Green Standard. The cap is normally 200 spaces, but the TGS basically overrides it and makes developers (who want to comply) up the bike per unit to 0.9 and no cap.
 
I'd wager the majority of traffic on the roads we're all speaking about, Front, Bathurst, Spadina, Lakeshore etc is not because of the condo developments but because of commuters coming in from the suburbs. Not local traffic. Locals walk around most of the time. I think the traffic boggeyman is just that. Traffic on Spadina for instance has always been bad and has not gotten correspondingly worse with the new condos. Same with Yonge & Eglinton and the Minto towers. I have not seen any noticeable rise in congestion.
 
hawc said:
I'd wager the majority of traffic on the roads we're all speaking about, Front, Bathurst, Spadina, Lakeshore etc is not because of the condo developments but because of commuters coming in from the suburbs. Not local traffic. Locals walk around most of the time. I think the traffic boggeyman is just that. Traffic on Spadina for instance has always been bad and has not gotten correspondingly worse with the new condos. Same with Yonge & Eglinton and the Minto towers. I have not seen any noticeable rise in congestion.
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Actually the traffic I am talking about is the residual effect on side streets such as Niagara, Portland, Wellington etc. which become vents and get plugged quick. That has changed significantly in the last 5 years and getting worse.
 
UrbanPrincess said:
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. you forgot to mention the almost 1000 bike spaces that are included. In regards to the parking, the city required almost 800 spaces of parking for this development. Normally people have a beef about the lack of parking, but they went over by over 100 spaces.
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Would these be true bike spaces, or "bike/storage lockers" that aren't usually good or really accessible for everyday use and sell for $4000 a pop?
 
SpadinaBus said:
1000 bike spaces - that is way overkill as I would bet that maybe 100 spaces will get used max every day during the bike season.

As for the car traffic, that is the nightmare coming. This site is huge and can handle alot of parking spaces due to its footprint. The roads around here only have so much capacity. This one sounds like Minto and Freed want to choke up the roads by overdeveloping their site.

Go on King Street tomorrow tonight west of Spadina and watch the fun. King/Bathurst intersection to be closed for nearly 3 weeks starting today/tonight.
S'Bus
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Overkill? We have a bunch of bike lockers at Luna that are full, management has installed bike racks in open areas of the parking garage - which are full, and management has also installed bike racks outside of the building, which are now full. Our 'bike lockers' are also not 4000 a pop... they go for $50 a year.

Im sure they will have no problem filling up 1000 spots, especially if they open them up to the public. Parking spaces also won't have much of an effect on traffic in the area. Cityplace has lots of parking, yet over 80% of the people in Cityplace walk, bike or take transit to work. As someone else mentioned, the congestion will be there no matter what gets built, as everyone uses Bathurst, Front and Spadina to get out of the city.
 
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