Zoning Reform Ideas

[afransen]

Lowering development fees / restructuring municipal finances

• they say only possible if they are alternate revenue streams for cities besides fees, development charges and property taxes for all municipal funding
  • some ideas they float are: getting a portion of HST generated in city back, putting road infrastructure fees on cars instead of housing
• Ontario Home Builders advisor says of $1.3 million avg house 500k is in government fees (taxes, charges, fees, etc.). Moffat mentions development charges have increased from 5k to 100k in 20 years.

I am partial to just funding development out of the property tax base. But if that is politically difficult, I could see having municipalities finance those development charges and amortizing them over 15-25 years as a surcharge to property taxes on the new units.

 

[rdaner]

Interesting.

4-storey stacked townhouses permitted on London 'neighbourhood connector' streets

A majority of council has ruled that London’s Official Plan should be changed to permit four-storey stacked townhouses on neighbourhood connector streets across the city.

london.ctvnews.ca

 

[Northern Light]

I've been meaning to do a write-up on the midrise design guideline changes, as proposed to the last meeting of the Design Review Panel.

I'm still a bit pressed for time, but I'm going to bring a few of the slides forward, and provide a link to the recording.

* I need to add a note to the above, while I favour a wider, more streetscaped condition for development, we need to be mindful that the above does impact development viability, whereas many main street sites currently have only ~2M sidewalks, you now need to remove 4M from the lot depth to transfer that to the City. This a substantial issue on shallower sites. I'm not arguing against this as such, though a 6M minimum is quite beefy for some extant conditions. I think this may merit further discussion.

* Let me pop in here and say that while I broadly support the slide above.........what's missing is a clear discussion of the need for additional rear laneways in blocks where none exist today. That is not necessarily the way we need to treat every street or block, but it is a crucial part of the ability to consolidate loading/servicing/parking in many contexts.

Link to recording, with any luck, right at the beginning of the above presentation, which is timestamped 1:53

 

[just east of the creek]

I've been meaning to do a write-up on the midrise design guideline changes, as proposed to the last meeting of the Design Review Panel.

I'm still a bit pressed for time, but I'm going to bring a few of the slides forward, and provide a link to the recording.

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* I need to add a note to the above, while I favour a wider, more streetscaped condition for development, we need to be mindful that the above does impact development viability, whereas many main street sites currently have only ~2M sidewalks, you now need to remove 4M from the lot depth to transfer that to the City. This a substantial issue on shallower sites. I'm not arguing against this as such, though a 6M minimum is quite beefy for some extant conditions. I think this may merit further discussion.

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* Let me pop in here and say that while I broadly support the slide above.........what's missing is a clear discussion of the need for additional rear laneways in blocks where none exist today. That is not necessarily the way we need to treat every street or block, but it is a crucial part of the ability to consolidate loading/servicing/parking in many contexts.

Link to recording, with any luck, right at the beginning of the above presentation, which is timestamped 1:53

Completely agree with your * paragraph, and so should every cyclist and pedestrian.