A look at past forecasts for Toronto

[scarberiankhatru]

CityPlace existed before Concord's involvement.

Ok Waldo, where is the millions of sq. ft. of office's?

While you may claim that I have moved the goalposts, that is simply not true. Not acknowledging the latencies involved in planning and development in order to justify your position is dishonest. By your logic one can claim that Dubai is doing fine, just by looking at all that has been built in the last two years.

You have the attention span of a goldfish with dementia. Concord's CityPlace did not exist then and is not the only land in question. This has been explained to you, though it seems you'll never get it. Go back and read ShonTron's first post for an explanation.

Yes, you've moved the goalposts. Everyone else noticed this fact but you.

Funny you should bring up Dubai, because you're basing Toronto's supposed failures on a lack of speculative office towers.

They are in York and Peel.

So all you can do is cite a nebulous "loss" of "countless" buildings housing "countless" jobs, most of which could not possibly have ever been accommodated in the 416. How constructive.

The analogy was to demonstrate the spurious link you made to commercial development and public transit. In an area (Yonge and Sheppard), that was served by a subway, the opposite happened. Next time I will make it more obvious for you.

My, you are slow. Office employment exploded after the Yonge subway was extended to North York...without the Yonge extension there'd still be nothing but bungalows and strip malls in Nortth York. The same happened elsewhere in the city as transit was expanded. Downtown Toronto would be very different today if the DRL was built in the 80s. Of course, I was talking about Consumers, which you know because you made an effort to change the subject.

Who thought a 5km stubway would trigger more office towers either along Yonge or in the Consumers office park which it does not serve? What we have now is not the Sheppard subway that was planned. How can parking lots well beyond a 5km stubway compete with greenfields next to the 407? Not by sitting around and hoping for the best.

Nope. There were approvals that were changed. you might also want to have a look at figure 4.3.1 here.

Again, you're whining about a loss of potential employment space. Envisioned future development levels can be changed if infrastructure and services change, or on a whim by council. One 40 storey tower is bigger than two 20 storey towers. So some speculative towers weren't built because of the recession...shocking! Do you have a point? There's still sites left, and when the 'free' sites are gone, something can be knocked down to make room. There's a city diorama in the North York Civic Centre that shows a continuous wall of short office towers lining Yonge, most of them theoretical placeholders for future projects not yet fleshed out beyond "one day, we'd like to put a tower there." It's just a scale model of Mel Lastman's megalomania, not a reminder of what would have been had Toronto not messed up. As if the city would be healthier today if all the parking lots built in the 80s and 90s were still around.

Of course how silly of me and the rest. That is why there has been so little commercial development. We need the city to be Avenueized.

Yes, suburban Toronto does need it, which is why it's happening.

The conversions happened before Sheppard being 'Avenueized', or the construction of the subway. Using them of an example of what will happen citywide after 'Avenueizing' and Transit improvements, is false.

'Avenueization' began years ago, though not necessarily under that banner, but the conversions are still happening and houses are still being replaced with larger buildings, including commercial developments. There is no subway on Finch, by the way, just simple rezoning.

 

[Glen]

You have the attention span of a goldfish with dementia. Concord's CityPlace did not exist then and is not the only land in question. This has been explained to you, though it seems you'll never get it. Go back and read ShonTron's first post for an explanation.

CityPlace, Concord's CityPlace, MetroCentre, Southdown, call it what you like, since the time of that article little office space has been developed. Take out government backed development and Shontron's list for the area dwindles to RBC Dexia and Simcoe Place (the only office tower constructed in Toronto during the 90's)

Yes, you've moved the goalposts. Everyone else noticed this fact but you.

You obviously have no idea how long the development process takes.

So all you can do is cite a nebulous "loss" of "countless" buildings housing "countless" jobs, most of which could not possibly have ever been accommodated in the 416. How constructive.

On the one hand you say that these offices could not be accommodated in Toronto but before you said.........

We can bolster the tax base in the future by replacing parking lots and 1-2 storey buildings with towers. As if we're going to run out of opportunities to build towers. Duh. Is this stuff too complicated for you

or

There's still sites left, and when the 'free' sites are gone, something can be knocked down to make room

You are contradicting yourself.

My, you are slow. Office employment exploded after the Yonge subway was extended to North York...without the Yonge extension there'd still be nothing but bungalows and strip malls in Nortth York. The same happened elsewhere in the city as transit was expanded. Downtown Toronto would be very different today if the DRL was built in the 80s. Of course, I was talking about Consumers, which you know because you made an effort to change the subject.

Who thought a 5km stubway would trigger more office towers either along Yonge or in the Consumers office park which it does not serve? What we have now is not the Sheppard subway that was planned. How can parking lots well beyond a 5km stubway compete with greenfields next to the 407? Not by sitting around and hoping for the best.

Again, simply saying that better transit will make commercial development happen in Toronto is patently false. The developer needs to have a return on his investment. The other day an office sold at 77 Bloor St. for less than $300 per sq. ft.. How much does residential go for in that area. Which would you rather build? You should also note that you can buy commercial land so cheap in Toronto that you could replicate the same type of office developments that occurred outside the city, with the same amount of parking, and much better public transportation access for less money. Though at the end of the day the property would be worth less than the costs.




I am convinced you must work for the city, with your defence of the status quo.

 

[taal]

Not to interrupt you two but clearly the possibility of one of you convincing the other ended long ago and with that gone any argument is mute.

Lets just agree to disagree and move on - the amount of repetition on both sides is ever increasing with each post made and while the debate was interesting at first it's quickly escalating to a yelling match online.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

CityPlace, Concord's CityPlace, MetroCentre, Southdown, call it what you like, since the time of that article little office space has been developed. Take out government backed development and Shontron's list for the area dwindles to RBC Dexia and Simcoe Place (the only office tower constructed in Toronto during the 90's)

You obviously have no idea how long the development process takes.

Aww, retreating to an absurd and obviously erroneous position. I know you found all those names in an old urbantoronto post, so you know they don't refer to the same site. Again, shifting goalposts won't fool anyone.

On the one hand you say that these offices could not be accommodated in Toronto but before you said.........

We can bolster the tax base in the future by replacing parking lots and 1-2 storey buildings with towers. As if we're going to run out of opportunities to build towers. Duh. Is this stuff too complicated for you

or

There's still sites left, and when the 'free' sites are gone, something can be knocked down to make room

You are contradicting yourself.

Did I say offices or did I say jobs? I clearly said jobs. You switch from whining about one to whining about the other whenever convenient. No, Toronto could not have accommodated Vaughan Mills, or a Durham hospital. What would we tear down to house all of Brampton's distribution centres? Even asking for every single office job to be located in the 416 is very idiotic and very impossible.

Again, simply saying that better transit will make commercial development happen in Toronto is patently false. The developer needs to have a return on his investment. The other day an office sold at 77 Bloor St. for less than $300 per sq. ft.. How much does residential go for in that area. Which would you rather build? You should also note that you can buy commercial land so cheap in Toronto that you could replicate the same type of office developments that occurred outside the city, with the same amount of parking, and much better public transportation access for less money. Though at the end of the day the property would be worth less than the costs.

I didn't say it would automatically happen - the trick is to read posts before responding. I said it would encourage it and help free up land even as your precious employment sites are sometimes rezoned for other purposes. That's why you made this thread, remember - complaining that employment lands like near CityPlace were being rezoned and not filled solely with office towers. Sites like Consumers can't compete if they don't even have transportation advantages over the 905. There's more to it than transit, though, which everyone knows.

I am convinced you must work for the city, with your defence of the status quo.

I'm not convinced you know how to read. You certainly haven't read any of the posts in this thread. Apparently, I said we should change many of the city's policies to defend the status quo...do you even know what status quo means?

 

[Junction416]

]Just to add something to this debate, the Canadian Urban Institute wrote a report about 5 years ago about office sprawl. Can see how suburbanization really took hold after the crash in 1989.

Lots of fun facts, charts and maps hope it clears up some of the arguments..

http://www.canurb.com/media/pdf/TOC_Report.pdf

 

[unimaginative2]

Back to the original CityPlace topic... How did CityPlace fit in with Southtown? I know the latter encompassed the current Telus/18 Yonge area and I think it was the CP counterpart to the CN CityPlace. Where was the dividing line? Where was that 6 million square feet of office space going to go? I think SeanTron might be on to something pointing out that a lot might have been in the Simcoe Place/CBC area.

edit: Hmm. It looks like a trip to Google answered my own question. This article provides quite a bit of information, including these bits:

As the plans mature, it is evident that
the Railway Lands can be subdivided almost
naturally into three, possibly four, distinct
neighbourhoods or areas. These are:

• CityPlace, CN Real Estate's lands west of John Street to Bathurst Street, an area that may become more residential and less commercial in character if the City's revisions are accepted by the Ontario Municipal Board;
• Central Park, an area of public amenities and attractions stretching from John to Simcoe streets, and including the CN Tower, SkyDome, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC), the planned park, and Roundhouse Museum;
• Southtown, Marathon Realty's lands, running from Simcoe to Bay streets, which will function principally as a southerly extension of the Financial District
• The Union Station Precinct, the central intermodal terminus and interchange for the region, as well as a primary pedestrian and transit connection between the downtown and the waterfront.

 

[unimaginative2]

]Just to add something to this debate, the Canadian Urban Institute wrote a report about 5 years ago about office sprawl. Can see how suburbanization really took hold after the crash in 1989.

View attachment 3478

Lots of fun facts, charts and maps hope it clears up some of the arguments..

http://www.canurb.com/media/pdf/TOC_Report.pdf

That's an incredible chart, Junction416. Thanks for posting it. It's pretty incontrovertible that most office development in the last two decades has taken place in the suburbs. Moreover, it's the worst kind of suburban development. Almost all of it is in auto-oriented parking-lot-surrounded buildings in parks near highway interchanges. If they were at least built around GO stations, that would be something, but they're not. The recent downtown office tower boomlet is great but it hardly reverses the trend. I wouldn't underestimate the power of the threat of bank mergers in halting all new downtown office towers for a decade. RBC and Bay Adelaide only started after the prospect of an entire tower emptying out with a merger became quite remote.

I think one of the other biggest problems was the Metro attempts to decentralize office development. There are major advantages to a location in the downtown financial district including prestige, proximity to services, proximity to other companies in related fields, and quality infrastructure. Likewise there are major advantages to locating in a 905 greenfield office park: low cost of land, free parking, low taxes, large floor plates, buildings to spec, highway access, fashionable "campus" setting. Metro tried to direct development to the suburban centres which have none of the advantages. Sites are constrained so free surface parking is impossible, taxes are high, transit access is relatively poor, land is relatively expensive and yet you get none of the prestige benefits of downtown. No wonder Metro's effort to discourage office growth downtown wound up pushing most growth out to the 905.

 

[Junction416]

I think one of the other biggest problems was the Metro attempts to decentralize office development. There are major advantages to a location in the downtown financial district including prestige, proximity to services, proximity to other companies in related fields, and quality infrastructure. Likewise there are major advantages to locating in a 905 greenfield office park: low cost of land, free parking, low taxes, large floor plates, buildings to spec, highway access, fashionable "campus" setting. Metro tried to direct development to the suburban centres which have none of the advantages. Sites are constrained so free surface parking is impossible, taxes are high, transit access is relatively poor, land is relatively expensive and yet you get none of the prestige benefits of downtown. No wonder Metro's effort to discourage office growth downtown wound up pushing most growth out to the 905.

I don't think Metro's policies can really be blamed. As the report notes the suburbanization of offices is not unique to Toronto but a result of large scale economic changes and restructuring. If anything the sprawl was encouraged by the lack of a regional strategy for controlling and directing office development once Toronto outgrew Metro. Overall I believe the office nodes where very successful for about twenty years. Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke all built relatively successful nodes on major transportation corridors. Unfortunately the land use coordination between transportation and employment sort of just stopped in the 1980s.