Damn straight! It's all city planners fault! I blame them too for my broken toe! Nevermind window wall and spandrel is enforced by provincial and national building codes.
 
wolfewood said:
Seriously, this forum has a weird obsession with tying any and all failings with skyscrapers in this city back to city council. Not that council is perfect but this tower is just classic Canderel and Graziani+Corazza. Just look at Aura down the street...
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And of course, we're told that one is also the fault of the DRP and not the proponent...even when the architect himself said, and I quote:

Which leads to the second and more important point: the development industry’s lack of civic responsibility. If you’re going to build tall, you have a duty to make the street and the city better. That means you hire the most talented architects available and give them the budget and authority to make a good building. You don’t wait for the city to coax and goad you into design quality.

This is not how developers like Canderel seem to think – and no wonder. When they sell condo units, they’re selling something that doesn’t yet exist. The illustrations they use to promote their proposed buildings are very handsome, but bear the small print: “artist’s concept” or “artist’s rendering.” Then there is the real thing, as at Aura, where the bottom levels are clumsily articulated in cheap windows and precast concrete. When I raised this with Mr. Graziani, he actually laughed. “That’s the rendering,” he said. “… And in Toronto you build to a budget.”
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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/new...-lesson-for-toronto-planners/article33621784/

Enough said. What's even funnier is this one got a BILD award for project of the year.

AoD
 
Don't ever expect developers in this city to do the right thing. This is vintage Canderel. Keep them away from the downtown core.
 
Developers are pretty much the same everywhere. Toronto gets a helluva lot more out of them than many other places. More places probably subsidizes developments than in Toronto where developer pay all sorts of improvement fees.

Canderel is just a crap developer from Montreal.
 
maestro said:
Damn straight! It's all city planners fault! I blame them too for my broken toe! Nevermind window wall and spandrel is enforced by provincial and national building codes.
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The City shares the blame too. They always settle for the cheapest in everything. From road signs, to street furniture, hydro posts, street lighting, garbage bins, park maintenance, etc. Why should we expect better from private developers when the city is not much better. If they could set an example maybe the private developers would follow.
 
maestro said:
Nevermind window wall and spandrel is enforced by provincial and national building codes.
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Window wall and spandrel are "enforced"? Huh?

Developers tend to choose window wall because it carries a lower initial cost and spandrel because it allows the solid and glazed portions of a facade to be constructed all by the same contractor. The Ontario Building Code (I have no idea about the national code; the provincial codes are what one refers to) enforces a solid-to-glazing ratio but it doesn't specify spandrel glass as the way to achieve it, and if anything, it favours curtainwall and other methods for their better performance, and which allow one to work around the specified glazing ratio.
 
maestro said:
Developers are pretty much the same everywhere. Toronto gets a helluva lot more out of them than many other places. More places probably subsidizes developments than in Toronto where developer pay all sorts of improvement fees.

Canderel is just a crap developer from Montreal.
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That's funny, I have heard the exact opposite from people I know who work in real estate. I was told that Toronto developers have a much higher profit than in other cities because development fees and other expenses are lower here than in other major cities around the world. I have heard from a number of people that developers love Toronto because the profits per unit are very high here.
 
Adjei said:
The City shares the blame too. They always settle for the cheapest in everything. From road signs, to street furniture, hydro posts, street lighting, garbage bins, park maintenance, etc. .
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"everything" is a stretch. How much did those umbrellas at Sugar Beach cost again? lol
 
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Torontovibe said:
That's funny, I have heard the exact opposite from people I know who work in real estate. I was told that Toronto developers have a much higher profit than in other cities because development fees and other expenses are lower here than in other major cities around the world. I have heard from a number of people that developers love Toronto because the profits per unit are very high here.
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From what I've heard, Toronto developers are fairly stingy with design and paying architects for quality work (except for the extremely high end developments where the consumer can discern).

That demand for low costs and high profits is probably a reason why a design mill like Arquitectonica gets to design some of the most efficiently proforma-ed suburban-tier condos on some of the most valuable lands in the city.
 
Seriously? Arquitectonica? You can count on one hand the number of projects they have in the city. There's probably more Foster designs floating around. Some isn't very specific. It covers a lot of bases. The foot of Sherbourne isn't nearly as valuable many other places in the downtown.

These are mid range condos. Of course, it's about keeping costs low. You guys make it out as if developments make out like bandits. It takes years to build a tower development and a ton of up front costs.
 
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modernizt said:
Window wall and spandrel are "enforced"? Huh?

Developers tend to choose window wall because it carries a lower initial cost and spandrel because it allows the solid and glazed portions of a facade to be constructed all by the same contractor. The Ontario Building Code (I have no idea about the national code; the provincial codes are what one refers to) enforces a solid-to-glazing ratio but it doesn't specify spandrel glass as the way to achieve it, and if anything, it favours curtainwall and other methods for their better performance, and which allow one to work around the specified glazing ratio.
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Sorry, I meant "allowed" by code. Planners can recommend curtain wall but, they can't forced it on developers.
 
Torontovibe said:
That's funny, I have heard the exact opposite from people I know who work in real estate. I was told that Toronto developers have a much higher profit than in other cities because development fees and other expenses are lower here than in other major cities around the world. I have heard from a number of people that developers love Toronto because the profits per unit are very high here.
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Some world markets are far more expensive than Toronto. It's a pointless debate unless it's an apples to apples comparison. You'd have more US giants flooding into Toronto if it was that great.

Profit can be higher than usual because market value is ballooning sometimes by 10% a year. As a developer, you can't count on that. That's just a bonus.
 
Torontovibe said:
That's funny, I have heard the exact opposite from people I know who work in real estate. I was told that Toronto developers have a much higher profit than in other cities because development fees and other expenses are lower here than in other major cities around the world. I have heard from a number of people that developers love Toronto because the profits per unit are very high here.
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This is a huge misconception. Profit margins are reflective of risk. Markets with higher risk, tend to have higher profit margins. Markets like Toronto which are constantly growing, and have a lot of sophisticated developers with deep pockets going after fewer and fewer opportunities (lower supply, and high demand), tend to have much lower profit margins. This has been the story in Toronto over the last 10 years.

When lots of developers are going after a small number of land opportunities, especially in scenarios where they are bidding for the land, there is such efficiency in the market that the land trades to the highest bidder. That bidder is often the highest for two reasons. The first, is that they are prepared to make less profit than the next guy (lower risk, means they can comfortably make less money). Or the second, they are confident they can squeeze more efficiency out of their building/proforma than the next guy. That could mean cheapening on materials. Building the most efficient and cheapest box possible.

Soft costs are almost the same for builders across the board. Land tends to always be the highest for the builder building it for the reason mention above. The only lines left to save on is the hard cost line (cheapening), or possibly the top line revenue (likely from taking the risk to build higher quality). The latter doesn't happen very often but there are some builders who believe in that philosophy. This is why looking at a builders track record in how they've executed buildings is so important when buying pre-construction real estate, and why buying the cheapest building isn't necessarily the best thing in the long run. You get what you pay for.
 
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