Land use implications of Transit City

[waterloowarrior]

I think we can say the land around stations will increase in value, and existing landowners will be tempted to sell to developers. In order to recoup the higher purchase price, they will have to build higher density to developments to sell a greater number of units. Some owners will not sell and will develop themselves, hoping to use the LRT as an attraction to sell a greater number of units. Either way, densities will go up - though how quickly is anybody's guess.

The one question that I'm interested in seeing is:

Whereas the city has set forth height and density limits along the avenues to keep the developments "pedestrian scale", will developers be able to build profitable buildings within those restrictions?

Found some interesting stuff on the City's website re: Avenues... mid-rise vs high rise pro forma

http://www.toronto.ca/planning/midrise_proforma.htm

and midrise economics workshop
http://www.toronto.ca/planning/midrise_workshop3.htm

 

[Eug]

Found some interesting stuff on the City's website re: Avenues... mid-rise vs high rise pro forma

http://www.toronto.ca/planning/midrise_proforma.htm

and midrise economics workshop
http://www.toronto.ca/planning/midrise_workshop3.htm

Thanks. That's interesting.

However, it should be noted that some of the studied and now rezoned avenues currently do not really have über-successful low rise retail. Some of these are dirt cheap right now. Not being a developer myself, I might be out to lunch, but my guess is that mid-rise mixed use residential-commercial could actually be quite lucrative for them in this context in many instances, although I agree the lack of high-rise amenities in a mid-rise building is potentially a turn off for some prospective condo buyers. What also should be noted is that many of these aren't simply just low rise. They are low rise with huge parking lots, which is essentially unused space. To compensate for the gobbling up of that parking space in future mid-rise developers, design proposals encourage underground parking when possible and maximizing rear laneway use.