Tag Archives: residential developments
Where to work when condos target industrial sites?
In tower-crazy Toronto, the pressure is fierce on planners to allow employment land to be turned over to “mixed-use” development. (Read: more condos.)
Tim Alamenciak – Toronto Star
The struggle for land in Toronto is pitting residential developers against industry in attempts to build condos on lands traditionally dedicated to jobs.
Chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat and her planning department are in the middle, fighting to keep Toronto a city that provides places for people to both live and work.
“There’s a real risk that the city faces at this moment,” Keesmaat said. “We are struggling with — and we need to struggle with — it, because … we could see a wholesale transition and loss of our employment lands.”
A rare window has opened in the form of a five-year plan review, allowing developers with sky-high dreams to push for rezoning lands currently dedicated to employment like factories and offices.
Those areas are, she said, “a really crucial asset to ensuring we have communities where people can live near where they work.”
The city has received more than 90 proposals to convert employment lands to other uses. Most are vying to have them designated as mixed-use areas, which would allow for condo development.
New requests are arriving at the planning office daily.
Documents obtained by the Star show a planning staff fighting hard against the rising tide of development, rejecting about half of the requests for changes to mixed-use developments, including large-scale areas such as the Sterling Rd. project.
Nestle recently waged a campaign against the proposed development.
More recently, the Mr. Christie’s plant at Lake Shore Blvd. and Park Lawn Rd. announced it would close, costing 550 workers their jobs. The company who owns the plant cited pressure from nearby residential developments, and has submitted an application that includes a concept for 27 condo towers.
The planning department has processed 65 applications so far and prepared a report to be considered at Thursday’s meeting of the planning and growth management committee.
“We need to wrap our hands pretty tightly around these employment lands and say, ‘Whoah, hold on a minute, this can’t just be a city where people live; people need to work here, too,’” Keesmaat said.
Employment lands and condos can co-exist, but the arrangement places stress on industrial businesses.
This stress is something Jonathan Bamberger, president of Redpath Sugar Ltd., knows well. He said the waterfront staple has spent millions of dollars handling negotiations regarding the nearby Corus Entertainment building on the east side and a spate of condos to the west.
“If we’d kept quiet, then all of these developments would have happened in the way that the developers would have chosen, and the placement of windows and balconies and everything — then we’d have faced a problem that we’d be out of compliance,” he said.
The company, with Queen Elizabeth doing the honours, officially opened the waterfront plant in 1959. It supplies sugar for many of Toronto’s industrial food operations, including Christie’s, Nestlé and Cadbury.
“We’re still navigating, but we are determined to stay. It’s not easy. As land uses change, you get pressure,” he said. “We had to work out those arrangements at great expense between every single developer on the waterfront here.”
While Redpath is determined to stay, Bamberger admits he’s concerned about what happens when people move into the waterfront condos next door, which are still under construction.
Across the city, Nestlé fired the opening salvos against a proposed development close to its Sterling Rd. factory.
The development, which was rejected by planning staff though seen as acceptable by most area residents, would include 700 residential units and enough office space to facilitate 2,500 jobs. Nestlé fears the nearby residential use would put pressure on its round-the-clock manufacturing operation, but the developer sees his company’s project as essential to the life of the area.
“What it requires is a rethinking which would rejuvenate the entire area and make it attractive to a new economy to move in there,” said Alfredo Romano, president of Castlepoint, the company who made the proposal.
Romano plans to appeal the decision to the Ontario Municipal Board, a provincial oversight body that deals mainly with land designation.
“I fear that not proceeding with this type of plan, the land will lie fallow for a long time to come, which is against everybody’s interest,” he said.
Experts and officials both agree high residential development values are driving the industrial lands towards condos and away from typical manufacturing. Industry simply can’t put up the kind of cash that deep-pocketed developers have.
“It’s quite a challenge in a booming metropolitan area with high land values. The key is, in virtually every case, residential uses can outbid industrial uses,” said Larry Bourne, a planning professor at the University of Toronto.
Bourne said there has to be an ironclad plan to maintain these lands as industrial; otherwise they’ll be kept empty in hopes of being granted residential zoning.
The Toronto Official Plan and Municipal Comprehensive Review process will take years. But the committee is capable of implementing changes along the way that could affect the shape of Toronto today, rather than years down the road.
Keesmaat said that as part of the review they’re looking towards policies that will help industry stay in Toronto.
“The problem is is that if we were to loosen our hold on our employment lands, they’ll all disappear — because that’s what the market will dictate,” she said.
—————————————————————————————————–
Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
—————————————————————————————————–
Incoming search terms
Related posts:
- Developer, Nestlé at odds over west end industrial land Castlepoint Realty is proposing to build a mixed-use residential development...
- SuperSpace Condos offer super opportunity — First industrial, commercial and warehouse condos in the GTA From The Condo Guide Magazine Something truly unique has surfaced...
- Industrial evolution Loft conversion projects are transforming abandoned factory lands into residential...
- Carlaw’s raw condo power is gritty and industrial The Printing Factory Lofts (at Queen and Carlaw) took a...
- Industrial evolution of the loft conversion Loft conversion projects are transforming abandoned factory lands into residential...
Is Liberty Village family unfriendly?
Though its combination of retail shops, office spaces, restaurants and residences have made Liberty Village a thriving neighbourhood, some fear that young families are fleeing the area due to rising rents, tiny condo units and businesses catering primarily to transient twentysomethings.
Ishani Nath – The Grid TO
Edward Keenan’s Nov. 10, 2011 cover story for The Grid posed the question of whether downtown condo complex CityPlace would become Toronto’s next ghetto, noting its high concentration of short-term residents and disengaged foreign ownership and the lack of nearby amenities and large, family-friendly units. In the article, the nearby Liberty Village was cited as a more successful highrise community, given that its mix of boutiques and businesses seem to attract more than just the typically transient twentysomething demographic. However, talk to some local residents these days, and they’ll tell you it’s just the same crowd in different condos. And with seven new towers set for completion by 2015, current housing trends suggest a future without families for Liberty Village, echoing the concerns of CityPlace residents.
“The new people have dogs,” says longtime Liberty Village resident Michael Golland. “They don’t have babies.”
Francesca Fabry, a representative of the Liberty Village BIA, echoes the sentiment. “The condos that are being built are such small units that I don’t see how it’s possible to live with a family, other than maybe a young toddler, in this neighbourhood.”
Instead, Fabry says that residential developments in Liberty Village—a good three-quarters of which were built after 1986—primarily accommodate young professionals without children. The resulting neighbourhood population is primarily between 25 and 44 (57%) and single (54%) according to real-estate website Zoocasa.
“There are two types of people that live in Liberty Village,” says real-estate agent Christine Cowern. “Younger people who can’t afford a house, and older couples who were living in a house and decided to downsize.”
The one characteristic that these groups share is the ability to live in smaller spaces, such as the one-to-two-bedroom apartments, condos and lofts that make up more than 80% of Liberty Village—a neighbourhood with no detached homes. And developers are capitalizing on this demand, says The Condo Store’s Paul Hegarty.
“Developers logically need to lower the square footage in order to increase value,” Hegarty says. And since families require larger living arrangements, this logic can add up to a price tag that people are not willing to pay.
In addition, Fabry says that local businesses have followed the developers’ example, gearing products and services toward the condo demographic. Residents have ready access to beer boutiques, fine cheese stores and fancy coffee shops but, Fabry says, “as soon as they have a baby, they move out to a neighbourhood with a school and a community centre and a library,” none of which are currently available in Liberty Village.
But former Liberty Village resident and current Parkdale property owner Consuelo de la Vega says that the neighbourhood can house families so long as residents are willing to adapt.
“It’s a perfect little place, it really is,” says the mother of two. “But people have to think about how much space they want and what are they willing to give up materially.”
Terry Smith and his family did just that. In 1995, Smith moved into a two-bedroom apartment at Liberty and Atlantic with his wife and two small children, and they still live there today. The lack of children’s services was not a major issue, according to Smith, since there are libraries and daycares in Parkdale, within walking distance from the Village.
Though his family of four never moved, Smith does concede that rising rent in both new and older buildings has turned Liberty Village into a neighbourhood that normal families can’t afford. He says that many of his neighbours are moving out because “why would you rent for $1,500 when you can get a mortgage for that price?”
As a result, Smith says, “there are no long-term residents” in Liberty Village.
Instead, the condos are creating a community in “continuous turnover,” according to Cowern. She says that, after three to four years, her clients tend to move out of Liberty Village to start a family.
As the neighbourhood fills up with single professionals, Hegarty says the next step will be “convincing Mike in [condo unit] 35 and Diane in 47 to stay and raise a family in Liberty Village.”
But, in order to build a more stable residential community, Hegarty says that developers will have to decide whether they are going to support potential future markets of emerging families or whether they are going to continue meeting the current demand from young urbanites.
And De la Vega adds that the change won’t just come from developers—The City needs to take action to support mixed housing.
Municipal and provincial governments need to “make allowances for growing a community, not just for building transient neighbourhoods,” she says. “It starts with those who make and enforce the rules. Developers just play by them.”
—————————————————————————————————–
Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
—————————————————————————————————–
Incoming search terms
Related posts:
- Liberty Towers — Liberty Village continues to grow The latest addition to the Liberty Village planned community will...
- Bliss Condos — Loft-Style Living in Liberty Village Bliss Condominiums are located in Liberty Village, which is south...
- Commute is now 30 minutes instead of three hours for new Liberty Village homeowner From The Condo Guide Liberty Townhome resident, Jai Gandhi, moved...
- Liberty Village by CanAlfa by Dan Flomen Over 20 years ago, developer Walter Jensen of...
- Toronto Real Estate — Focus on Liberty Village by Amy West Liberty Village is a unique community located in Toronto’s...
Understanding the new normal in the housing market
George Carras – Yourhome.ca
It’s tough to appreciate a new condominium building without standing back from it to gain some perspective. It is equally as difficult to assess what’s happening in the new condominium market without having a similar kind of perspective.
There’s a lot of discussion about the GTA’s new condo market these days, and all that talk can be both healthy and dangerous.
The market does not exist in a vacuum; it is one part of a total new home market that serves the GTA’s rapidly growing population, guided by a provincial policy that is directing the region to grow up, not out.
Builder inventories are an important gauge used by industry professionals to assess the state of the new home market.
Remaining inventory is a measure of the total number of units left unsold at the end of each month in sales centres across the GTA, whether those units are in pre-construction, under construction, or built and unsold.
Lowrise projects are ground-oriented housing projects, like detached homes, semi-detached homes, townhomes and links. Highrise projects are more intensified residential developments, such as condo apartments, lofts and stacked townhomes.
On a monthly basis, RealNet — the official source of new home information for the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) and the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) — researches every new home development in the GTA with more than 15 units, both lowrise and highrise.
As of March 31, RealNet’s Highrise Remaining Inventory — which measures the number of unsold units in the GTA — grew to a near record high of 18,369 units.
For a bit of perspective, note that while highrise inventories have returned to the near record high levels set in the fall of 2008, lowrise inventories during that same time period have plummeted by 61% to a near record low of 6,302 units.
Over the long term, total remaining inventories in the GTA — the number of unsold highrise plus lowrise units — has normally been between 25,000 and 30,000 units. The rise in highrise inventories in March led to a 24,671 rise in total inventories.
This represents a new kind of normal for the GTA market. Ten years ago, while the total number of units in builder inventories was roughly the same as today, the composition of that inventory — that is, the types of homes available for consumers to choose from — has become dramatically different.
In March 2002, lowrise homes were the dominant form of new home offerings, representing 65% of total builder inventory. In March 2012, while the GTA housing market is at roughly similar levels of total inventories, there has been a complete reversal in the dominant form of the inventory, with highrise options now representing 74% of builder inventories.
There will always be housing cycles, but what the GTA market has been experiencing is a structural shift away from lowrise housing and toward highrise living. Recognizing that distinction is key for anyone aiming to understand this new normal.
—————————————————————————————————–
Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
—————————————————————————————————–
Incoming search terms
Related posts:
- Perspective is the key to understanding the condo market Condos make up the highrise component of the new home...
- Is GTA market pushing the limits? There is no shortage of chatter about the GTA new...
- The GTA is now a four-season housing market I guess we can start talking about the fall rea...
- The new-home market is shifting into high gear George Carras – Toronto Star ast year was a record for...
- The GTA is an area on the rise Highrise construction is certainly on the increase, not only in...
