HousingNowTO said:
There is no functional way to deliver new Affordable-Housing at the speed and scale that Toronto says that it wants to (40,000 new units by 2030) without stepping upon some of the things that people would describe as "very real quality of life concerns".

Sometimes that means Shadow, sometimes that means Parking, sometimes that means "Built-Form" and Design preferences...the list of local preferences/concerns is virtually endless once any specific-site is suggested.

NOTE : That doesn't matter if it is a 3-storey project or a 30-storey project.

The process since the 1970's in Toronto has been over-weighted to the preferences of current residents, at the expense of future-residents. Our volunteer work leads to real improvements on the delivery of new affordable-housing units - and if that is "problematic" for some, we can live with that outcome.

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I find this post more problematic than the last.

You're highlighting concerns that often had more to do with bigotry than with built-form.

As someone who helped get Macey through, and actively pushed for more density at the Victoria Park and Warden Station locations, and lives not that far away; there were both reasonable questions/concerns and those that no person had any business expressing.

I am not about to suggest abiding bigotry.

That's not the same thing as having reasonable concerns about built-form.

My issue here is the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable; and the distinction between accepting causing some people some concern (legitimate or otherwise) vs going out and eliciting blow-back, the harm to those that need housing be damned.
 
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Northern Light said:
I find this post more problematic than the last.

You're highlighting concerns that often had more to do with bigotry than with built-form.

As someone who helped get Macey through, and actively pushed for more density at the Victoria Park and Warden Station locations, and lives not that far away; there were both reasonable questions/concerns and those that no person had any business expressing.

I am not about to suggest abiding bigotry.

That's not the same thing as having reasonable concerns about built-form.

My issue here is the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable; and the distinction between accepting causing some people some concern (legitimate or otherwise) vs being going out and eliciting blow-back, the harm to those than need housing be damned.
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Everyone's "reasonable concerns about built-form" and "the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable" are very-much qualitative and in the eye-of-the-beholder.

The public-comments process (pre-covid) was heavily weighted towards the current-residents/councillors and the media-bias is always towards the easy to tell "concerned neighbours" type of stories above.

Our volunteers just ask for a clear-understanding of what is the exact "Affordable-Housing Unit-Loss" on this project in order to meet - in this specific case - a Shadow-on-a-Park concern..? Is that a rational-choice in Toronto in 2021..?

28 Affordable-Housing units LOST from this project in a well-serviced area is a substantial number, and a huge lost-opportunity for the City to meet its own targets.

It's great for the City to spin-up a new program like this one below in the same Councillor's ward to add 34-units, but by losing 28-units on the G2 site (*as it has done on many others in the OPEN DOOR program) - the City is constantly walking-away from viable opportunities for creating new affordable-housing because of what some would describe as "reasonable concerns about built-form".

Are those qualitative preferences worth the qualitative loss of units..?

In our opinion, no - the City should be able to relax many of its Urban Design Guidelines once a certain threshold of Affordable-Housing units is achieved.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1362424279732809728
 
Found these renderings of a "Toronto mixed-use project" from bkL Architecture dated 2017. (From an unsuccessful bid to Infrastructure Ontario for this site?)

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Final Report to the April 20th meeting of TEYCC, approval recommended.

Report here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2021/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-165186.pdf

From said report:

The revised proposal which is the subject of this report consists of a mixed-use building with two towers, 32 and 46 storeys in height, connected by an 11-storey podium with a 9- storey streetwall expression. The proposal includes 770 rental dwelling units, of which 231 (30% of the units) will be affordable rental units.
 
Art Tsai said:
The new rendering is updated in the database! The rendering is taken from the architectural plan via Site Plan Approval!

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So this is the rendering that was chosen to be developed! The other one was nice but we need all brick precast skyscraper facades. Which is lacking in the downtown core. . It would be nice to see them start asap lol!
 
I don't want to be guilty here of the 'any updates' bump..............

But I offer a non-update that seems curious.

SPA was never issued for this; there's been no movement that I can discern on permits since the middle of last year; and there's no suggestion of a resubmission either.

Odd.

Anyone have insights I can't find online?
 
I would expect a CIHA or a MZO.
 
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