[trtcttc]

Zoning is not a barrier to housing in Calgary or Edmonton. Calgary easily has enough mostly NIMBY unencumbered and underutilized inner city land to build hundreds of thousands of units: Beltline (especially the eastern side and Stampede Grounds), Mission, Sunalta, West Village, Currie, Westbrook, University District, Eau Claire, DT, and East Village, dt rail corridor.

Agreed on your zoning point. The idea of blanket zoning sounds nice, but it won't spur the city wide construction of rowhouses, townhouses, small apartments that advocates think it will. What might happen is a developer may propose something that doesn't fit with the scale of a neighbourhood and that will be used as the poster child for NIMBYs to block further construction. We have a lot of empty downtown plots, most plots by main streets are already up zoned. I also don't find neighbourhood opposition or slow city approval processes have blocked many developments in Calgary. I think we should be thinking of ways to spur building now rather than developers holding land because it may be more profitable to build later.

 

[DougB]

Agreed on your zoning point. The idea of blanket zoning sounds nice, but it won't spur the city wide construction of rowhouses, townhouses, small apartments that advocates think it will. What might happen is a developer may propose something that doesn't fit with the scale of a neighbourhood and that will be used as the poster child for NIMBYs to block further construction. We have a lot of empty downtown plots, most plots by main streets are already up zoned. I also don't find neighbourhood opposition or slow city approval processes have blocked many developments in Calgary. I think we should be thinking of ways to spur building now rather than developers holding land because it may be more profitable to build later.

Higher interest rates will do that without action from the City as the financing cost to hold land has almost tripled. The City could dramatically decrease the turnaround for approvals to allow developers to start building sooner and save on financing.

 

[CBBarnett]

Agreed on your zoning point. The idea of blanket zoning sounds nice, but it won't spur the city wide construction of rowhouses, townhouses, small apartments that advocates think it will. What might happen is a developer may propose something that doesn't fit with the scale of a neighbourhood and that will be used as the poster child for NIMBYs to block further construction. We have a lot of empty downtown plots, most plots by main streets are already up zoned. I also don't find neighbourhood opposition or slow city approval processes have blocked many developments in Calgary. I think we should be thinking of ways to spur building now rather than developers holding land because it may be more profitable to build later.

Why raising the base maximum density everywhere is a valuable tool is that we (i.e.. planners, the public, developers) don't really know in the long-run where people will want to live and how prices will change. Therefore any attempt at tailoring zoning to be exactly the "right" amount and nothing more - which is the current land use and R1/R2 paradigm - is inevitably wrong in the long-run, and often wrong the instant it was created. This adds costs and delays all over in unpredictable ways, but most critically adds friction to grow supply where demand exists, which then manifests in higher prices and reduced affordability.

This is an acute problem on the well located low-density residential lands because that's where the where demand is so often exceeding supply - townhomes and smaller apartments are incredibly popular but there's such limited lands available to build them, with most lands being dedicated to protect now unaffordable single family homes.

To be fair to our current process, we have the ability to adjust this zoning where market demand exceeds zoned supply through redesignations - but as we know they are ad-hoc, individually time consuming, and subject to public input, debate and risk. Raising the base everywhere will remove the need for some of these lands to go through these steps.

Rather than get too cute by fine-tuning zoning into a million little nuanced low-density zones where anything you do requires a land use change, just bump everything up everywhere a bit and remove silly barriers that prevent modest intensification such as parking minimums. The impact of modest intensification is negligible, there is no real material "impact" that needs to be regulated here to such precision in low-density areas.

What upzoning doesn't do is create development where there is no demand - it's why you can upzone Forest Lawn all you want right now and not much will happen - market demand is lower than zoned capacity (for now). However, if we raised the base density citywide, including in Forest Lawn, when demand shifts and things change this year, next year, next decade, we don't have any work to do or debates to be had - the market development response can be quicker to respond to changing and shifting demands, wherever they happen.

Is blanket upzoning on low-density areas a panacea to all affordability/development issues? No. Will it help as part of the solution and lead to a far more market responsive supply/demand relationship on a local level? Absolutely.

 

[Alex_YYC]

The endowment fund ensures that inner city schools have options to offer programs or incentives to attract students and keep schools well maintained as the inner city child populations increase. If the schools do well it's an extra incentive for people to raise children in the inner city and send them to schools already built.

The endowment fund is a good idea, otherwise the money from the sale would vaporize.

 

[Tarsus]

I think the idea of building on a portion of school lands is worth looking into on a site by site basis.
There’s no question there are lots of schools that have big open fields that are rarely used for much. Especially in the inner city where there are multiple schools in short distances ic each other.
Perhaps a portion of the schoolyard, at the end of the field for example, could be sold to developers, and part of the money goes back to the school board as an overall endowment fund and a smaller portion could go into an endowment fund for the specific school.

I'll pick on this NW school as my son went there so I'm very familiar with it. The section of playground marked in red is rarely used as 80% of the students play and hang within 30m of the school, and another 15% hanging in the 90m range. The ball diamond is used only once in a while during the summer, but could still be moved.

View attachment 505517




The ball diamond moves south, and a small low-rise multifamily development goes in at the far end as shown. I've used an example of a 4 storey development from 17th ave NW that has 36 units per building. Two buildings would make a nice 72 units to an area which is adjacent to a bus route and a bike lane, and a stone's throw from a beautiful park.
I'm guessing here, but suppose the land was sold for $7 million. The province or school board could take $5 Million and put into an endowment fund, and the school could take $2 million. After all it is the school who's losing some of its land. This could be a game changer as many inner city schools have the land available on main arteries and bus routes and is attractive to developers.
The endowment fund ensures that inner city schools have options to offer programs or incentives to attract students and keep schools well maintained as the inner city child populations increase. If the schools do well it's an extra incentive for people to raise children in the inner city and send them to schools already built.

View attachment 505521

At $2 million, the schools endowment fund would easily generate $100,000 a year and that’s going with only a basic guaranteed income investment.

 

[MichaelS]

At $2 million, the schools endowment fund would easily generate $100,000 a year and that’s going with only a basic guaranteed income investment.

So not even enough to hire one full time teacher..... sorry to be a downer, but $100k is just not a lot of money when it comes to operating a school.

 

[Tarsus]

So not even enough to hire one full time teacher..... sorry to be a downer, but $100k is just not a lot of money when it comes to operating a school.

I wouldn’t use it for teachers salaries, that should come out of the CBE budget like it normally does.
It should be used for smaller one time costs like social events, field trips, minor improvements here and there. New basketball hoops, that type of thing. Minor asphalt repairs to the school yard.

I use that example because one of the parking lots at my daughter’s former school is gravel and is an icy slippery mess in the winter.

They were talking about paving it back around 2010, and it still isn’t paved because there’s never been budget. IIRC the cost was 40K to pave it, paint lines, cement bumpers etc Not a lot of money but there are more important priorities of course.
An endowment fund would be good for those kinds of things.

 

[DougB]

Another idea.....blanket rezoning of suburban strip malls. Allow a certain height adjacent to existing SFU, stepping up as it moves further away. Calgary must have several hundred such sites and most are at the entrances to communities, meaning they are likely on bus routes and will not create additional traffic through the community. Of course to avoid a Doug Ford style greenbelt debacle, the City would have to constrain anyone involved under NDA and announce the policy big bang style to avoid land speculation. This would preclude public consultation.

Disused church sites could follow the same model, although with nowhere near as much development potential.

 

[DougB]

Not a bad idea. But should we seek to burn political capital at two levels of government to create 50 Richmond Green conflicts.

Are school sites owned by the Province or the City? The former Manchester School East of Chinook was redeveloped by the City as social housing. I can think of several other examples: King Edward transformed into cSPACE and condos, Milton Williams replaced by GE5 interchange, David D. Oughton redevelopment by CMLC, RB Bennett site in Bowness.

Wouldn't the real challenge be for the Province to declare the site to be surplus? Politicians seem to want to prolong the fantasy of shuttered schools reopening in the future or empty fields in 10 year old suburban communities still being on the new school wait list.

Another way out there idea.... How about redeveloping structurally deficient schools or new schools to be integrated with multi-unit residential? The City is doing something similar with firehall redevelpment. I'm sure this would raise safety concerns from Karens everywhere. The usage profiles are complimentary as schools are only during the day when residents would largely be at work

 

[trtcttc]

Another way out there idea.... How about redeveloping structurally deficient schools or new schools to be integrated with multi-unit residential? The City is doing something similar with firehall redevelpment. I'm sure this would raise safety concerns from Karens everywhere. The usage profiles are complimentary as schools are only during the day when residents would largely be at work

There’s a high school in Toronto, North Toronto CI that is built adjacent to many condo buildings, and they are building a new elementary school within a condo at a very high density area in the Waterfront. I think the safety concerns weren’t that significant from the residents because housing prices are so high in Toronto that many of the people inside the condo are young families. The schools are also in very expensive neighbourhoods with new condos, which means the condo residents are typically high income. I can definitely see schools being built into high density areas like the EV, but introducing a condo tower to a residential area beside a school, will probably result in lots of opposition.