Markham Aviva Canada | ?m | 12s | Remington Group | BDP Quadrangle

Parking lots serve a better function than an empty field. Long term the plan is to build parking garages and develop the lots, but in the mean time there is a ton of extra land.

Vaughan centre is doing the same thing, smart centres is building several large commuter parking lots charge for people using the subway, but will eventually be replaced by buildings.
 
But why build a building in a future urban area without a couple levels of underground parking? Is the construction time frame that tight?
 
maestro said:
But why build a building in a future urban area without a couple levels of underground parking? Is the construction time frame that tight?
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Employers like cheap surface parking; underground parking is incredibly expensive and I suspect that building underground parking at the get-go for the first few offices (Honeywell and Aviva) would be uneconomical and would lower chances of landing potential tenants, especially in DT Markham where development is still in its infancy. Having an office building with all its parking in an above-ground garage is still better than having no office building at all.
 
The original plan for the area was for underground parking throughout. In one of these threads someone suggested that Remington discovered that the water table is higher than they expected, making it more expensive and complicated to dig -- and that that companies which might be interested to build here don't want to pay the added cost. No idea if that's an accurate account, but I suppose it makes sense.
 
WislaHD said:
Employers in suburban locations require parking, unsurprisingly.
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As do employers downtown, who house their cars in parking structures.

The comments I made were in respect with the city of markham designing this area to be its downtown core, and how the parking lot seems contradicting to the goal.
 
UD2 said:
As do employers downtown, who house their cars in parking structures.

The comments I made were in respect with the city of markham designing this area to be its downtown core, and how the parking lot seems contradicting to the goal.
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How do you propose workers from Toronto, Sauga, Oshawa etc. get to these downtown Markham offices without using the car?
 
I believe he proposes that they implement underground garages.

Downtown towers do indeed have parking, but probably at 1/10th of the rate of these towers. Its around 0.25 spots per 100m2 downtown from what I remember, while the suburbs often require over 3 spots per 100m2. That is a TON more for underground. This building will provide 736 spots, or roughly 2.2 spots per 100m2.

The planning report for the project specifically discusses the lot;


The applicants are designing the parking lot to meet the Markham Centre office parking
standard of I space per 3 7 square metres of floor area, which will generate a demand for
approximately 736 spaces (Figure 5). The Markham Centre parking strategy and By-law
contemplates that the majority of these spaces will, in the long term, be accommodated
within a parking structure (Figure I 0). The strategy also recognizes that it may not be
feasible to build the necessary parking structures at the outset of development and
anticipates that as an interim condition, certain required parking spaces could be provided
at-grade until such time as there is a critical mass of development and transit
infrastructure in place to support structured parking and a lower parking rate. Minor
variances will be required to allow the surface parking in the interim, and
conditions/limitations will be imposed which will allow the City to revisit this matter,
after an initial period of up to 5 years, or in the event another development is proposed
within this block.
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The whole appeal of building office space here is cost. If they were required to put all those spaces underground, they might not build here at all.

I want this place to become urban, but I suspect that this is a limit on trying to urbanize a suburban location.
 
That very last point is key and has already been called out; While this is a new downtown like vibe, which indeed attracts commercial tenants, costs are still key and this isn't downtown or midtown or nycc, so costs need to stay within a particular range; They can charge a premium compared to typical suburban blocks but still, probably building underground parking makes that very different, parking garages are probably ok given they allow for more land use anyway.

I think VCC will be similar but it will compare to NYCC given it has direct subway access as well.
 
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