News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 9K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
EarthCam Time-Lapse Documents Rafael Viñoly-Designed New Stanford Hospital Construction
 40K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
Resort Town
 5.2K     0 

MichaelS said:
Added to the bold part, don't forget the end consumer.
Click to expand...

Implicitly part of the "private sector". In addition to the retired, childless couple who still wants 4 bedrooms and a 2-car garage, the "end consumer" could also include retailers who wouldn't contemplate leasing anything other than strip mall and big-box spaces.

That said, I do think there's a significant amount of end consumers who really want a Kensington/Inglewood lifestyle without having to pay inner-city property values. Pre-1960s neighborhoods across North American are in high demand and it somehow escapes our ability to create more of these neighborhoods.
 
Geo_Jedi said:
Not sure if anyone has seen this, but this is an updated video on what Seton should look like when complete. I like the looks of the Market Street, and living close by, I can confirm they have done a really good job with their digitization of currently completed buildings so I have hope that this is more of what the final product will be then what has been seen previously.

-Vimeo - RK Visualization
Click to expand...

The oceanic parking lots are detestable, but the rest of it is pretty good. I wish they could have put the parking on top of the stores as many urban-style big box retailers do.

I hope they go the modern route rather than faux historic. No one will be fooled, and why bother trying? They should go with something new and striking. Seton could go either way, but I'm hopeful.
 
Habanero said:
I agree. This is a big part of it. People can complain about the new subdivisions and the need to change their design (and I'm not disagreeing), but right now they are designed in a such a way that it makes economic sense to the developer and the buyers. What could we do to re-design this to assuage the complaints?

Issue 1
A big box boutique mall centered around a network of private roadways makes another. This is a very tough issue to tackle, as it isn't feasible for retailers to do an urban format store at the edge of the city. They've tackled part of the issue with Market Street having some retail and street frontage.

Issue 2
The un-rectifiable issue of the neighborhood being designed as a silo, with no way to connect to it surroundings except by car. Another tough issue to deal with, it's an entire road network infrastructure problem and has nothing to do with the developer or even the buyer. It's an issue the city need to take a good look at.

Issue 3
I'm referring to the grass buffer between the sidewalk and the buildings. Is this really a big issue though? It's not being done on the buildings along

Issue 4
As with all of these "new urbanism" developments, they like to brand themselves as "urban" because it's stylish I can't disagree with you there. It's not ever to have the urbanism of an inner city neighborhood like Inglewood, Sunnyside, etc..
Click to expand...

These are designed because everyone only cares about the bottom line and buyers can be persuaded to by into anything. These communities are being built to last many generations. They deserve more attention than how many dollars developers can squeeze out of it and how many dollars municipalities can squeeze out of developers.

Issue 1 ... urban format.

It's actually not a tough issue. The big box village is more alike to urban format than traditional big box malls. Mixed use just complicates things. A condo developer rather not include ground floor retail and a retail developer rather not include residential. That's the likely scenario here. There was no push for mixed use here and so it wasn't provided.

Issue 3
It is. It's "in the park" planning. It's unwelcoming, wasted space that adds nothing to the pedestrian's experience except to spread things out even more. There are existing buildings on Market St built this way.

Issue 4

That once again raises the problems I have with the Seton branding. It has elements of new urbanism but, it's a far cry from many new urbanism developments. Those plans encourage the inclusion of residential in the big box villages with office buildings arranged along streets (some with retail) with multi-level garages. The public amenities are also in massive, sprawling structures surrounded by tons of landscaping and parking. Their setting and access isn't any different from traditional built suburbia but are being sold as if they are.
 
Three bedroom condo discussions have got back in the news recently, wanted to see what the thoughts are here:
http://www.metronews.ca/news/calgar...ders-mandating-more-three-bedroom-condos.html

I am less interested in personal preferences of housing type than I am to why we have so few 3+ bedroom units in the inner city ? The ones we do have that are relatively new are incredibly expensive, regardless of the format (townhomes, row houses, mid/high-rise etc.) Having family supportive housing options is a key tool for urban vibrancy and creating a truly urban culture in Calgary. Montreal and Toronto have many times the amount of 3+ bedroom options in their inner city and it shows in the amount of activity, street life and culture in those cities. It's not just families either in those cities, 3+ bedrooms are common for university students providing affordable options in central locations for students and young adults wanting to get in on the urban action.

For Montreal, the enormous supply of walk-ups provide a vast range of sizes and qualities in the 3+ bedroom range. Most of these units were built 80+ years ago (old buildings being a typical source of affordable housing, which unfortunately is not a supply Calgary can rely on as we were small / we have destroy almost everything from that era). Whole swaths of the inner city are built at very high density with this type of building, allowing a large and highly diverse family population to flourish in the inner city forever. For Calgarians, there is really no comparison: tens or hundreds of thousands of 3+ bedroom units are in the inner city. I wonder what it would take to spur a modern version of Montreal's walkups: both in unit size and quantity?

For Toronto, they seem to have benefited similarly with their row and narrow lot houses throughout the core. In many central neighbourhoods much of this old stock has been divided, creating 3 or 4 units within what used to be 1, providing huge density and choice benefits. Obviously, decades-long redevelopment pressure has factored heavily into Toronto's stock; with whole neighbourhoods being designed with more 3+ bedrooms than a typical redevelopment you would see elsewhere.

But what about going forward? Can cities build reasonably priced 3+ bedroom condos or rentals in inner city areas? What are the barriers to why we don't see more reasonable 3+ bedroom units? $2 million townhomes don't count as 99% of the population will never afford them.
 
CBBarnett said:
Three bedroom condo discussions have got back in the news recently, wanted to see what the thoughts are here:
http://www.metronews.ca/news/calgar...ders-mandating-more-three-bedroom-condos.html

I am less interested in personal preferences of housing type than I am to why we have so few 3+ bedroom units in the inner city ? The ones we do have that are relatively new are incredibly expensive, regardless of the format (townhomes, row houses, mid/high-rise etc.) Having family supportive housing options is a key tool for urban vibrancy and creating a truly urban culture in Calgary. Montreal and Toronto have many times the amount of 3+ bedroom options in their inner city and it shows in the amount of activity, street life and culture in those cities. It's not just families either in those cities, 3+ bedrooms are common for university students providing affordable options in central locations for students and young adults wanting to get in on the urban action.

For Montreal, the enormous supply of walk-ups provide a vast range of sizes and qualities in the 3+ bedroom range. Most of these units were built 80+ years ago (old buildings being a typical source of affordable housing, which unfortunately is not a supply Calgary can rely on as we were small / we have destroy almost everything from that era). Whole swaths of the inner city are built at very high density with this type of building, allowing a large and highly diverse family population to flourish in the inner city forever. For Calgarians, there is really no comparison: tens or hundreds of thousands of 3+ bedroom units are in the inner city. I wonder what it would take to spur a modern version of Montreal's walkups: both in unit size and quantity?

For Toronto, they seem to have benefited similarly with their row and narrow lot houses throughout the core. In many central neighbourhoods much of this old stock has been divided, creating 3 or 4 units within what used to be 1, providing huge density and choice benefits. Obviously, decades-long redevelopment pressure has factored heavily into Toronto's stock; with whole neighbourhoods being designed with more 3+ bedrooms than a typical redevelopment you would see elsewhere.

But what about going forward? Can cities build reasonably priced 3+ bedroom condos or rentals in inner city areas? What are the barriers to why we don't see more reasonable 3+ bedroom units? $2 million townhomes don't count as 99% of the population will never afford them.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with your thoughts. I think one step we need to take is getting going with secondary suites. When I lived in Toronto as a student, it was 16 of us in the same house (4 in the basement, 4 on the main floor, 4 on the second floor, and 4 in the attic). The living conditions were what you would expect, but it was cheap and we were a 3 minute walk from the downtown University of Toronto campus.

By being able to break out some of our 'single-family' housing stock into multiple suites, we'd immediately create viable, affordable housing in the inner city, which we sorely lack.

Of course, this needs to be on top of pushing for the development of larger condos and additional density.
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/three-bedroom-condo-debate-developers-side-1.4493312
The developers replied back, apparently they think theres not enough demand to justify the costliness of the such projects. I for one know a few families that wouldn't mind moving into the belt line but the lack of affordable 3 bedroom options is an issue. Im sure adding a few extra floors onto condo towers with 3 bedroom options isn't going to sink them into red and would be healthy for longterm belt line density and diversity. I think we need to let go of this American attitude towards owning your own home in the suburbs or else this urban sprawl will just get out of control.
 
I think a lot of people would like the three bedroom option, and I think the demand is there (if cost allows), but given the cost, the demand isn't there. I've heard from numerous people involved in selling condos that 3 bedroom units are a hard sell....but of course it's the price point. If there was a way to make three bedroom units cheaper, there would be people interested for sure.
 
Surrealplaces said:
I think a lot of people would like the three bedroom option, and I think the demand is there (if cost allows), but given the cost, the demand isn't there. I've heard from numerous people involved in selling condos that 3 bedroom units are a hard sell....but of course it's the price point. If there was a way to make three bedroom units cheaper, there would be people interested for sure.
Click to expand...

I agree with this whole heartedly as my wife and I are some of those people. We purchased our downtown 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo pre-construction for $498,000 (including gst). We've been hoping to buy a three bedroom condo or a larger 2 bedroom plus den however every single one we've found are in the $850,000+ range. Essentially a $350,000 premium for an extra 300 - 400 sq ft.

I understand what the developer is saying in the article in terms of extra costs for additional parking spaces but the trend that I've seen in Calgary is every developer automatically adds an extra $200+/sq ft premium on to any larger units over what they're pricing other units in the same development. If they kept their price per sq ft the same through the building those same three bedroom units would be selling for close to $700,000 and be within the purchasing range of a much larger group of Calgarians.
 
outoftheice said:
I agree with this whole heartedly as my wife and I are some of those people. We purchased our downtown 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo pre-construction for $498,000 (including gst). We've been hoping to buy a three bedroom condo or a larger 2 bedroom plus den however every single one we've found are in the $850,000+ range. Essentially a $350,000 premium for an extra 300 - 400 sq ft.

I understand what the developer is saying in the article in terms of extra costs for additional parking spaces but the trend that I've seen in Calgary is every developer automatically adds an extra $200+/sq ft premium on to any larger units over what they're pricing other units in the same development. If they kept their price per sq ft the same through the building those same three bedroom units would be selling for close to $700,000 and be within the purchasing range of a much larger group of Calgarians.
Click to expand...

Parking is a cop out though. Sure, more parking = more expensive (somewhere between 45-60K per stall underground). But you don't have to built extra parking in many areas that are missing 3BRs, at least from a policy or bylaw point of view. Few of the examples in Montreal or Toronto include more than one parking stall, some include zero. And both cities have underground parking costs similar to here. Parking is only one part of the affordability question - and likely one of the easily resolved (i.e. just don't mandate parking at all and let people build as little as they want, with the subsequent savings per unit).

What else explains the premium for 3 bedrooms? It isn't parking alone.
 
outoftheice said:
I agree with this whole heartedly as my wife and I are some of those people. We purchased our downtown 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo pre-construction for $498,000 (including gst). We've been hoping to buy a three bedroom condo or a larger 2 bedroom plus den however every single one we've found are in the $850,000+ range. Essentially a $350,000 premium for an extra 300 - 400 sq ft.

I understand what the developer is saying in the article in terms of extra costs for additional parking spaces but the trend that I've seen in Calgary is every developer automatically adds an extra $200+/sq ft premium on to any larger units over what they're pricing other units in the same development. If they kept their price per sq ft the same through the building those same three bedroom units would be selling for close to $700,000 and be within the purchasing range of a much larger group of Calgarians.
Click to expand...
I've heard the same thing from others as well. If the going price is say, around $600-700 per square foot for a 2 bedroom place, the extra 200-300 sq ft is $1,000 sq ft? It would be nice if the price per sq ft at least stayed the same.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AJX
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top