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Sheppard Subway - Development Impacts

M

Mike in TO

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North York Development since the subway.

There is always an interesting ongoing debate regarding the value of the Sheppard Subway – with many people claiming it to be a misallocation of resources. There was an interesting article in NRU today about North York’s development exploding since the approval of the subway in 1995. Below is a list of all the development in North York since 1995

Built since 1995

1. 63-83 Drewry/Fairchild
2. PArk Place
3. Finch / Pemberton
4. Finch / Pemberton
5. The Paramount
6. Fince / Kenneth Drive
7. 15-27 Lorraine
8. Northtown
10. 5412-5422 Yonge, 15 Hosham
11. Northtown Phase C
12. Dominion Store
13. Empress Plaza
14. Empress Plaza
15. Empress Plaza
16. Hillcrest/Doris/Elmwood
17. 77-95 Spring Garden, 153 Doris
18. 15-19 Finch/Lorraine
19. 5575 Yonge, 11,15-25 Finch East
20. 16-30 Byng
21. Northtown
22. 880 Grandview
23. 12. McKee, 330 Doris, 21 Church
24. 18 Parkview
25. 17-25 Hillcrest, 18-22 Elmwood
26. 5000 Yonge
27. 43 Sheppard East
28. Yonge and Avondale
29. 40-62 Byng, 35 Holmes
30. Northtown way
38. Northtown Phase A
39. Northtown Phase B
40. 24-44 Horsham, 29-39, 45 Hounslow
41. 70-102 Ellerslie
42. Yonge/Norton Centre I
43. Yonge/Norton Centre II
44. Parkview/Doris/Kingsdale
45. 20-32 Empress, 14,15,21 Kingsdale
46. 69,70 Ellerslie
47. 76 Spring Garden
48. Sheppard East/Clartrell
49. The Empire, 28-38 Kenaston Gardens
50. The Chelsea, 19 Barberry
51. Amica at Bayview, 15 Barberry
52. St. Gabriele's church
53. NY Towers 1
54. NY Towers 2
55. NY Towers 3
56. NY Towers 4
57. NY Towers 5
58. Canadian Tire Store
59. 53 Cummer
60. Menkes, Bales
61. Loblaws, Bayview Village
62. 2831 Bayview
63. 50 Spring Garden
64. The Rockerfeller, 12-26 Kenastron Gardens
65. 55-61 Drewry
66. 426-442 Kenneth
67. 1 & 19 Avondale
68. 5176 Yonge
69 33 Drewry

Under Construction
1. 4917-4995 Yonge, 8-18 Spring Garden
2. 5566 Yonge
3. 170 Sheppard East
4. Finch/Lorraine/Blakley
5. 8,10 & 12 Clairtrell
6. 12,14,16 Rean, The Claridges
7. 1019 Sheppard Ave E, Canadian Tire
8. Fince/Duplex/Greenview
9. 19-27 Churchill
10. Northtown (Phase 2)

Approved
1. 43 Drewry
2. 5270&5290 Yonge
3. 5200 Yonge
4. 4800 Yonge
5. N/W Yonge/Poyntz
6. 120 Sheppard Ave E
7. 4804-4812 Yonge/20 Sheppard Ave W
8. Dangreen/Orlando/Bayview/Sheppard
9. The Chelsea, 19 Barberry
10. Mini Skools, 685 Sheppard
11. Post Office, 699 Sheppard
12. Canadian Tire Site
13. Fairview Mall
14. 1200 Sheppard Ave E
15. 5795 Yonge
16. 9&11 Clairtrell
17. Parkview Forrest
18. 2924-2929 Bayview
19. 25 Canterbury
20. 650-672 Sheppard Ave E
21. 603 Sheppard Ave E
22. Buchan Court

Proposed
1. Gibson Square
2. Fairview Mall
3. Oakburn Apartments
4. 55-65 Ellerslie
5. Willowdale Plaza
6. 5350 Yonge
7. 9 McKee
8. 43 Sheppard East
9. 16-22 Clairtrell
10. 19-37 Olive & 18-31 Holmes

The article notes that in the last 9 years 20,264 units have been approved and of those 16,000 have been built or are under construction in NYCC, also 312,748 sq.m. of non-res GFA has been added to North York.

The Sheppard Corridor (not including NYCC) has 11,000 new units approved to date since construction began on the new line in 1998. The article noted that ridership has grown steadly since opening in November 2002 from an average weekday ridership of 34,700 in 2003 to 43,000 in 2006. Apparently Sheppard recently passed the Scarborough RT ridership. The TTC is hoping to achieve their target of 48,000 riders in the next couple of years.

Don Mills has an average of 28,000 weekly riders and the low-point is Bessarion with only 2,100. Back in NYCC, North York Centre has 25,700 and Sheppard/Yonge has 69,000. The TTC apparently has high hopes for Bessarion with Concord Adex planning 5,000 units in the immediate area. Concord is expected to submit a an application for site plan approval of the first two buildings that will combine for a total of about 1,000 units.

Some large pending applications:
  • 100 Parkway Forest Drive - 2,500 condo units proposed
  • 555 Finch Ave W - 7 Building with 1,257 units approved for hospital & medical uses
  • 1 Oakburn Cres - 1,195 units proposed in 5 towers (SE of Sheppard & Yonge)
  • 1,35,40 Fountainhead & 470 Sentinel - 8 midrise towers with 1,116 units
  • 2205 Sheppard Ave E - Atria Phase 4 proposal - 914 units + 283,464sq.m. office space
  • 1121 Leslie - residential and office proposal
  • 4759-4789 Yonge - two towers of 37 & 45 stories with 825 units
  • 24 Finch Ave W - 766 units in 31 & 26 story towers
  • 10 Lorraine Dr. - 511 units in two 21s towers
  • 9 Tipett Road - 498 units in midrise buildings
 
They really need to start improving the frequency of the Sheppard line...there's no need to have trains sit there until they're completely full, wasting time and making trips uncomfortably crowded, when they could fly along at 3 minute frequencies. This would even help ridership since shaving even a few minutes off a commute may trigger someone to switch routes.

Even with all of this residential construction along the subway line, there will still be more people living between Don Mills and STC than Don Mills and Yonge...it's still a stubway that should have gone from Downsview to STC from day one. A Danforth line extension to STC would help people east of ~Kennedy more than a Sheppard extension, but Agincourt itself would generate heavy subway ridership.

North York Centre station's ridership figures - it's up from 16,570 back in 2002 - are even more remarkable considering it has no surface TTC connections (well, there's the Yonge bus but I bet connections number in the tens per day at most). Also, there's pretty furious condo activity going on north of NYC station, although lots of these new people will use Finch station. There's even yuppies up there, perhaps priced out of Y&E. I've seen 20+ people get off a single train and head straight into Loblaws.

A good deal of Willowdale's overall population increases have been in the huge swaths of single detached houses, where the zillion widows who lived there until the 90s started being replaced by families, but there's no question that the condos are dramatically intensifying transit-using populations along the subway lines.
 
Yes, that is Hullmark - Willowdale Plaza's Dominion's address of 4775 Yonge comfirms this. I thought it had more units, though there is an office component.

And I didn't notice this one earlier: 2205 Sheppard Ave E - Atria Phase 4 proposal - 914 units + 283,464sq.m. office space. I've seen the notice board for the residential part, but 3 million square feet of office space is so much that the figure must include the other existing Atria phases.
 
Scarberian: Sorry, but there must be some mistake with that figure. 3 million square feet equals the total of all three of the big towers presently under construction downtown: Bay Adelaide, Royal Bank Centre, and Telus Tower. Is there a decimal place missing there somehow?
 
I copied and pasted it from above. It did seem strangely high, obviously too high to be a single building and there's not enough room at the Atria site for warehouses - if anything, it should read as square feet, not metres. City reports can combine existing and planned residential units on one property into "proposed" total units (here's an example: http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2005/agendas/committees/ny/ny050208/it016.pdf ) which is why I suggested that the fantastic 3 million figure maybe could be right if the square footage of the entire complex was being added together, though I find it unlikely that the Atria complex would reach even 2 million sq.ft.

The square footage of Royal Bank Centre and Telus Tower aren't anything special compared to a host of suburban complexes, but they are likely to have a lot more workers per square foot than in the suburbs.

Problem solved: http://www.toronto.ca/economic-development/signature_sites/pdf/C-27.pdf proves it's square feet, so just a modest new phase between Atria III and Sheppard.

The Consumers office park looks like a moderately dense concentration of buildings and jobs at street level, but looking at air photos you see tons of large parking lots...there's room for millions of square feet of new offices and condos should the subway ever be extended a bit.
 
That's a hell of a lot of developments, and it will be impressive to see the further developments over the years along the 401 and Sheppard corridor.
 
Development is also slightly exploding along the rest of the Sheppard corridor. By the time the subway is extended to Downsview and STC, there'll be easily 20,000 new residential units ready and waiting within walking distance of stations west of Yonge and east of Don Mills.
 
I've said before that a subway to Agincourt would pass through territory already more developed than any other previous subway project outside of the YUS loop, and the longer it goes, the more people will be attracted to it, such as the huge Finch East ridership base. Pardon the graphic imagery, but aborting the subway in the Don Mills trimester and amputating the Yonge-Downsview leg may go down as one of the worst infrastructural mistakes in this city's history.
 
The idea of Transit City is that a large LRT network can serve more people than a small subway network, but these people don't consider the effect on intensification that a subway has if it is built in the right place. Yeah, sure it is expensive, but how much revenue has city gotten from all these developments listed here?
 
Doady,

The city has certainly gained a lot of revenue from those developments - the province and feds even more so. I'm frustrated that much of the discussion by the anti Sheppard subway and pro Sheppard LRT people is focused almost exclussively on the capital costs and operational costs yet neglects to take into account the massive intensification opportunities and revenues for all three levels of government from development (GST, PST, Development Charges, income taxes and corporate taxes generated from the employment in the construction sector, permit fees etc). The direct taxes generated from the development itself goes a long way towards supporting the capital costs of subway construction - that isn't to say Transit City shouldn't be LRT's... but I am concerned that a Sheppard LRT and maybe an Eglinton LRT will be viewed as a mistake in 15-20 years.
 
That's presuming there would be no development at all unless a subway was built. These condos would still have been built, maybe not on Sheppard, but certainly somewhere. The city has done virtually nothing new for transit downtown yet development has exploded. The various governments have made a lot more downtown where they invested little then on Sheppard where they spent a lot.
 
Ed,

The North York Secondary Plan has caps on densities on the Yonge NYCC corridor that were unlocked when the Sheppard Subway started construction - so it's not just the Sheppard Corridor, but also the Yonge Corridor that gained a significant number of new units with the new subway line.

Obviously new development hasn't covered the entire cost of the line, but there are huge spin off benifits that transit and new development can produce.
 
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