The fact is, you can't dictate what can go under those condos on Yonge st. It is driven by market force - is the government going to say only non-chain restaurants and shops can rent those space, but not Starbucks or banks? Subway and McDonalds, just like others, are just regular retail, which shouldn't be discriminated against.
Well, no. That's not true at all. The whole premise of the land use planning regime in Ontario is that it is not left completely to market forces and that there are restrictions on said forces. A fundamental aspect of zoning is the control over uses. The whole point of zoning is to discriminate among choices, whether it is permitted uses or performance standards.
I not sure about that. How to achieve that? How is the planning committee going to say, if you have a chain restaurant, I won't approve it; otherwise, it is OK? How is a McDonald's fundamentally different from a single burger restaurant? We are going to punish a business for being a chain with deep pockets now?
And in all seriousness, Apple store is a chain, not so unlike Starbucks or Subway or a RBC, yet we all look forward to it. We can't decide what can or can't have stores on Yonge based on our preference.
You achieve it through zoning. Zoning controls permitted uses. Municipalities do it all the time. They also do it indirectly, by controlling the performance standards applicable to commercial units (most notably minimum and/or maximum sizes, but also by controlling everything from location to parking ratios), so as to encourage/preclude specific types of uses.
I didn't say that we wouldn't approve chain restaurants. Where did you get that? There is an important distinction in planning law -- we can regulate uses, but not users. We can decide whether we want restaurants or not, and zone accordingly, but we generally can't say dictate in the zoning that it be (or not be) a chain, a franchise, etc. We can't say independent coffee shop good, Starbucks bad, Tim Hortons okay.
Toronto has not given a lot of thought to the make-up of retail at the base of residential buildings in the downtown (it has given more consideration to the types of retail and service commercial uses that should, or shouldn't, be permitted in other types of developments). There are exceptions, particularly the imposition of restrictions on night clubs, lounges, certain types of restaurants, and they do often control the uses through size controls. But there are examples downtown where they have been even more specific. From a first principles perspective, there is nothing stopping the city from, say, not allowing a bank as a permitted use in the site-specific zoning for a condo building. Like any planning issue, it is important to achieve an appropriate balance, and one certainly doesn't want to restrict the commercial uses to such a degree that leasing the space becomes difficult.
There is an interesting development application happening in downtown Ottawa, where the local Councillor is turning the focus away from predictable fights over height and focusing instead more on the types of uses that the local community would want to see at the base of the building. The Councillor wants more retail space, and wants the by-law to permit desirable retail uses (which he describes as grocery stores, hardware stores, etc.) and to control/restrict less desirable uses (he mentioned that the neighbourhood does not need more restaurant space). I have no idea if the controls proposed by the Councillor make any sense whatsoever (I don't know the specific details), and I would certainly agree that the by-law should not be too prescriptive. And, of course, the zoning cannot control whether the tenant ends up being Ida's Fresh Groceries/Heintzman & Sons Hardware, or Sobeys Urban Fresh/Canadian Tire Express.
I'm not advocating that the City start dictating retail tenants. Even if they could, they shouldn't. But there are macro-level type controls where they can positively influence the retail make-up in an area. I think we will see more of this.
