Toronto Minto Long Branch | ?m | 4s | Diamond Corp | Guthrie Muscovitch

Colonel Samuel Smith said:
Damn, am I the only one disappointed that Long Branch is losing an industrial area to yet more residential?
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Help me understand the appeal of the industrialness of Longbranch? I'm quite glad that things are taking a turn for the better. It's such a beautiful area of Toronto. I suppose you like the fact that the industrial On the main thoroughfares hides the inner beauty well.
 
The idea being that lost industrial lands comes part-in-parcel with the loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs in the area or at least the potential for them.

Not that merely saving industrial zoning is going to stop us from losing industrial production on its own, but there are consequences to converting employment lands to other uses in the city.

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This site is dead as a door nail, with no equipment and trailers on site anymore.
 
Excellent that this will have retail along Lakshore after all. I thought the whole development was just going to be street-deadening, boring, faux town homes. That mid-rise building is quite attractive. Perfect avenue infill!
 
Just researching this property for real estate investment purposes and got very confused with the hoarding photos. This is NOT the Southshore site. It is located at Twenty Fourth St and Carnation Ave. The signage on the hoarding would have been just advertising their other property above, and now clearly under construction.

THIS property is marketed as Minto Long Branch (with new signage to not confuse us lol):

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And a revised Development Proposal:

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You can see in the following links (and in the one that AlbertC already posted above from Diamond Corp) that the Beer Store is relocated along Lake Shore Blvd:

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http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/3851189-former-arvin-meritor-building-could-be-the-beer-store/

http://www.clearstreamcre.com/uploads/Minto_Brochure.pdf

The Beer Store redevelopment with a few more stores will be Phase 1 of the project.

Hope this helps to clarify.
 

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jakerjaker said:
Help me understand the appeal of the industrialness of Longbranch? I'm quite glad that things are taking a turn for the better. It's such a beautiful area of Toronto. I suppose you like the fact that the industrial On the main thoroughfares hides the inner beauty well.
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By replacing everything with residential they are taking multi use communities and turning them into single use communities. I thought that mode of thinking was widely discredited, was it not? Once upon a time South Etobicoke (Mimico, New Toronto, and Long Branch) were very self contained communities where you could live/work/play. Sure you would never see a major corporate headquarters or big mainstream concert in these parts, but if someone wanted to, they could easily get by on whatever was within a short walking distance. Developments like this one homogenize the area and just add more people who end up needing to go downtown or over to Mississauga for all their daily needs. If we're trying to build a modern sustainable community this is the opposite of what is needed. Also on a personal note, by tearing up factories and replacing them with this kind of thing it destroys the blue-collar character of these communities and makes them much less appealing (at least from my perspective). I'd rather the land sit vacant for 15 years than simply open the floodgates for the kind of gentrification that has been seen in other parts of the city (admittedly this ship probably sailed ~20 years ago). I will give this one a bit of credit though for actually putting retail along Lakeshore, I can't believe the crap that has been allowed along some other parts of the strip.
 
tiffer24 said:
The blue-collar world that you're nostalgic about is slowly disappearing in this neighbourhood (and many others) and will probably never return.
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Between greed, Unions, technology, markets, outsourcing and etc, industry is declining to the point there too much land for it. You will never see the same amount of industries down the road that there was up to the 80's.

Then if we are to build places to live, work and play in, we need to redesign and develop areas like this one.

One has to be careful about retail being at the base of everything as there are projects all over the GTA that were built almost 5 years ago that have all or most of the retail units empty today.

Since Long Branch and most of the south area are car folks, they will drive to the malls or big box areas and you need retail that will stop this some what. This means not having your run of the mill retail opening up like Subway, Mr Sub, dry cleaning etc. Even KFC die here.

Having good transit is a must, but this is not on TTC radar for this area these day where you can wait over an hour for a 15 minute headway streetcar.

If people think this area is bad for vacant space, they need to look north toward the RR corridor to see huge amount of vacant land that was service by the RR. CN old yard is next to nothing these days.

Lake Shore will be mostly low-mid rise in this area as there is nothing there today to draw tall towers. Hard to see any office development take place let along small industry coming to this area when there is land by the QEW/427 sitting empty.
 
industry is declining

drum118 said:
Between greed, Unions, technology, markets, outsourcing and etc, industry is declining to the point there too much land for it. You will never see the same amount of industries down the road that there was up to the 80's.
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Industry overall in Canada has many problems, but in the 416 specifically, the majority are being gradually priced out to the 905 and beyond.
This quarter the GTA industrial market has 3.9% vacancy*
http://www.collierscanada.com/en/Commercial-Property-Research
The old city of Toronto has a 0.1% availability rate according to Colliers 'GTA Industrial Market Statistics Q2 2013'

Low density industrial can't always compete for land with retail/ box stores, much less with multi-floor condos in trendy locations. This is why almost all jurisdictions have policies/ zoning to prevent conversion (if places across NA like Vaughan weren't giving away serviced industrial land, perhaps industry would go multi-level and wouldn't need zoning protection).

I talked to planners in my own ward (18) and found that industrial buyers have indicated an interest in purchasing industrial property but are not able to outbid developers who typically pay 2 - 4x the average industrial price (ward 18). Speculators have bought up much of the industrial land leaving buildings empty or underused (ready to be vacated) or demolish them.*
In the mean time developers, lobbyists & construction firms donate to pro-development councillors (mine also vice chair of planning) who push to rezone industrial to residential dramatically boosting land values/ profits.*
Despite the city's official goals, pols are helping big box, condos & large churches gradually squeeze out industry all over the city wherever demand exists. Despite rapid population growth the 416 has about the same number of jobs it had back in 1991, which has a lot to do with the large rise in reverse commuting to jobs which tend not to be practically accessible by transit.
 
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Who knows: Perhaps one day when these glitzy new condos are ancient they'll be converted back to industrial uses?

Mimico--really most of Etobicoke--really reminds me of Kitchener: A proud, misunderstood solidly working class city with a slightly obnoxious overlord class (ie management, biz owners etc.) I think it's awesome as is. :)

Not to get too far OT: But I get the disconnect between the "downtown" elites and the RF types. It's really not much different than comparing Kitchener to Guelph.
 
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green22 said:
Industry overall in Canada has many problems, but in the 416 specifically, the majority are being gradually priced out to the 905 and beyond.
This quarter the GTA industrial market has 3.9% vacancy*
http://www.collierscanada.com/en/Commercial-Property-Research
The old city of Toronto has a 0.1% availability rate according to Colliers 'GTA Industrial Market Statistics Q2 2013'

Low density industrial can't always compete for land with retail/ box stores, much less with multi-floor condos in trendy locations. This is why almost all jurisdictions have policies/ zoning to prevent conversion (if places across NA like Vaughan weren't giving away serviced industrial land, perhaps industry would go multi-level and wouldn't need zoning protection).

I talked to planners in my own ward (18) and found that industrial buyers have indicated an interest in purchasing industrial property but are not able to outbid developers who typically pay 2 - 4x the average industrial price (ward 18). Speculators have bought up much of the industrial land leaving buildings empty or underused (ready to be vacated) or demolish them.*
In the mean time developers, lobbyists & construction firms donate to pro-development councillors (mine also vice chair of planning) who push to rezone industrial to residential dramatically boosting land values/ profits.*
Despite the city's official goals, pols are helping big box, condos & large churches gradually squeeze out industry all over the city wherever demand exists. Despite rapid population growth the 416 has about the same number of jobs it had back in 1991, which has a lot to do with the large rise in reverse commuting to jobs which tend not to be practically accessible by transit.
Click to expand...

I believe we've surpassed the job Total from 1991 now, but just if we have ...

But still, I think part of that is due to a lot of office space that left the 416 (throughout) to the 905, industry does factor in but only in the sense that when industry left, it wasn't replaced with office, rather commercial.

The core it self has rebounded (surpassing previous years job totals) but not so for the rest of Toronto.


I think industry leaving is OK and natural, not replacing it with office is the real problem ... but when is the last time you've seen an office development outside of the core ? Where most of the industry was located.
 
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final report

http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2013.EY29.2

These applications propose the comprehensive redevelopment of former industrial properties at 3560, 3580 and 3600 Lake Shore Boulevard West into a mixed use community. The applications propose an eight storey mixed use mid-rise building and a single storey commercial building on separate parcels fronting Lake Shore Boulevard West. The interior of the site would consist of three and four storey townhouse and stacked townhouse blocks organized around a new public street network and a public park.

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2013/ey/bgrd/backgroundfile-63348.pdf
 
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