Toronto Mirvish Village (Honest Ed's Redevelopment) | 85.04m | 26s | Westbank | Henriquez Partners

Northern Light said:
On top of which you would ignore the heritage properties that everyone wants saved but you.

Though oddly you have time to try to save the decrepit, 2-storey, low-density, aesthetic disaster that is Sneaky Dees.

I really don't mean this personally, I don't know you; but I find your posts increasingly illogical and inconsistent in ways that baffle me.
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I agree with the first part of your post, but here you're putting words in Alex's mouth and misrepresenting his position. I've found his arguments to be pretty consistent when it comes to heritage, density, and built form.

I don't know where you get the idea that he wants the heritage buildings here demolished. I mean, if you read what he's written about Mirvish Village, you'll see he specifically calls out heritage preservation as one of the positives of this development:
It features meaningful preservation of heritage buildings, a serious sustainability agenda, and affordable housing...

The strategy toward heritage retention is likewise first-class – Westbank's latest offer is to retain 23 of 27 designated buildings on the site, with thoughtful stewardship from ERA Architects and signage that echoes the punny greatness of Ed's slogans.
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I agree that the heritage preservation on offer here is great, as is the new park space. But during negotiations with the city, planners forced the buildings here to be downsized, removing hundreds of units in the process. The negotiation wasn't all bad: it did result in more park space, better preservation of heritage, and lots of affordable housing. But Alex's point in criticizing the planning department, which I agree with, is that the city should be focusing on ways to add more housing in the midst of a housing crisis, not less.

(And Alex never argued that Sneaky Dee's, specifically, should be protected from redevelopment. That would be absurd. His point, which I thought was pretty obvious, was that the city considers neighbourhoods with houses to be sacrosanct, thereby funnelling development to main streets where it inevitably results in beloved businesses and entertainment venues being replaced with condos, while destroying the fine grained urbanism of the older buildings on those streets. That's a deliberate choice that the city has made, not an inevitability. It's right to ask whether that is the right choice, which Alex is doing.)
 
smably said:
I agree with the first part of your post, but here you're putting words in Alex's mouth and misrepresenting his position. I've found his arguments to be pretty consistent when it comes to heritage, density, and built form.

I don't know where you get the idea that he wants the heritage buildings here demolished. I mean, if you read what he's written about Mirvish Village, you'll see he specifically calls out heritage preservation as one of the positives of this development:


I agree that the heritage preservation on offer here is great, as is the new park space. But during negotiations with the city, planners forced the buildings here to be downsized, removing hundreds of units in the process. The negotiation wasn't all bad: it did result in more park space, better preservation of heritage, and lots of affordable housing. But Alex's point in criticizing the planning department, which I agree with, is that the city should be focusing on ways to add more housing in the midst of a housing crisis, not less.

(And Alex never argued that Sneaky Dee's, specifically, should be protected from redevelopment. That would be absurd. His point, which I thought was pretty obvious, was that the city considers neighbourhoods with houses to be sacrosanct, thereby funnelling development to main streets where it inevitably results in beloved businesses and entertainment venues being replaced with condos, while destroying the fine grained urbanism of the older buildings on those streets. That's a deliberate choice that the city has made, not an inevitability. It's right to ask whether that is the right choice, which Alex is doing.)
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I may come back to this.

But I'll tell you honestly I was endeavouring to write a thoughtful response, and I found I was onto a 2-page rant about Alex's articles and posts that would have been neither helpful nor appropriate.

Perhaps we'll take this up in DM in smaller chunks; but suffice to say I don't have much time for his posts anymore. I find them seriously flawed, more often than not.

I'll leave it at that for now.
 
smably said:
I don't know where you get the idea that he wants the heritage buildings here demolished. I mean, if you read what he's written about Mirvish Village, you'll see he specifically calls out heritage preservation as one of the positives of this development:
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Thank you. This thread is getting... weird, but:

1. On a big site such as Mirvish Village, it's possible to keep some existing buildings while adding a lot of density in adjacent towers. That's what happened here, and it's in many ways a good example -- except there should be twice as much density as there is.

2, Most people's perception of "density" is tied to height. This means that smallish apartment buildings fly under the radar, and they could be a good route to intensify neighbourhoods, if they were allowed, which they aren't. That building at Palmerston and Harbord has an FSI of roughly 4. The Mirvish development has an FSI of about 5.
 
Sean Galbraith replied to that tweet with a good point. That building that Alex posted if built today would be paying a fortune in DCs.

DCs really should be based off of the GFA of NSA (or some other calculation) rather than per unit.
 
AlexBozikovic said:
Thank you. This thread is getting... weird, but:

1. On a big site such as Mirvish Village, it's possible to keep some existing buildings while adding a lot of density in adjacent towers. That's what happened here, and it's in many ways a good example -- except there should be twice as much density as there is.

2, Most people's perception of "density" is tied to height. This means that smallish apartment buildings fly under the radar, and they could be a good route to intensify neighbourhoods, if they were allowed, which they aren't. That building at Palmerston and Harbord has an FSI of roughly 4. The Mirvish development has an FSI of about 5.
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My problem with this statement is two fold.

First, immediately above you made a claim that the the apartment had GREATER density than the Mirvish site.

Which you now concede isn't true.

Second, The real Mirvish FSI is much higher.

The low number comes from calculating park space and the preserved heritage properties.

If you look at the FSI on portion of the site being actively redeveloped, you get a much higher number.

That makes the comparison to the building on Harbord or the one on Palmerston utterly unfair.

The parks associated w/those proposals aren't on their site.

An Apples to Apples comparison would be to add the apportionment of parkland that would belong to the Harbord/Palmerston sites to their calculation and to remove the heritage properties from Mirvish.

Just look the bulk of Mirvish again.

1600950272995.png


That is neither low density nor is it anywhere near as low as you imply. That is not a 5.0 FSI.

You're getting that number by including all the parks and heritage properties shown here:

1600950350554.png


I like the Palmerston apartment and would support more like it.

I'm a champion of intensification.

But I dislike misleading statements that get their facts wrong both from a legalistic perspective and from a fair-minded holistic one.
 
Again, this thread is getting very weird. The FSI for Mirvish is 5.6 exclusive of the heritage buildings; 5.2 including them. That apartment building I posted is roughly 4.

I was wrong on the details, but the point stands. Let's say there's a 50% difference; while one is invisible, the other is massively controversial. This seems interesting!

In Toronto we're making a lot of buildings (espectially midrise on the Avenues) that look very dense, and are complex and expensive to build -- but are not actually very dense. All the worst effects of redevelopment, with limited payoff.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Palmerston neigjbourhood has basically zero population growth.
 
Northern Light said:
My problem with this statement is two fold.

First, immediately above you made a claim that the the apartment had GREATER density than the Mirvish site.

Which you now concede isn't true.

Second, The real Mirvish FSI is much higher.

The low number comes from calculating park space and the preserved heritage properties.

If you look at the FSI on portion of the site being actively redeveloped, you get a much higher number.

That makes the comparison to the building on Harbord or the one on Palmerston utterly unfair.

The parks associated w/those proposals aren't on their site.

An Apples to Apples comparison would be to add the apportionment of parkland that would belong to the Harbord/Palmerston sites to their calculation and to remove the heritage properties from Mirvish.

Just look the bulk of Mirvish again.

View attachment 271474

That is neither low density nor is it anywhere near as low as you imply. That is not a 5.0 FSI.

You're getting that number by including all the parks and heritage properties shown here:

View attachment 271475

I like the Palmerston apartment and would support more like it.

I'm a champion of intensification.

But I dislike misleading statements that get their facts wrong both from a legalistic perspective and from a fair-minded holistic one.
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I think you are maybe reading a little too much into this. I believe the point is that we ought to replace single family annex homes with multi unit small buildings. Something that doesnt APPEAR significant but will have a large impact. Currently the opposite is happening in the Annex. What used to be 2 or 3 unit homes are being renovated and converted into single family homes. I have seen 3 of these projects alone on 2 blocks of Markham street in the past few years.
 
thefreak said:
I think you are maybe reading a little too much into this. I believe the point is that we ought to replace single family annex homes with multi unit small buildings. Something that doesnt APPEAR significant but will have a large impact. Currently the opposite is happening in the Annex. What used to be 2 or 3 unit homes are being renovated and converted into single family homes. I have seen 3 of these projects alone on 2 blocks of Markham street in the past few years.
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I wouldn't argue against that at all.

But I think you are very kind to Alex to read that in to his statements.

I won't run off on a diatribe here except to say I've noticed his penchant for making absolute, extreme and contrarian statements as of late.

Not really new to him, but far more frequent recently.

This has caused me to view most of his statements more skeptically.
 
AlexBozikovic said:
Again, this thread is getting very weird. The FSI for Mirvish is 5.6 exclusive of the heritage buildings; 5.2 including them. That apartment building I posted is roughly 4.
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For the record, the FSI is 5.69 if you include the parkland.

Which is an entirely unreasonable thing to do.

If you remove the parkland, the FSI is 6.2

If you remove the required E-W Privately-Owned Public Space (POPS), the City-required concession to widen Palmerston lane, and N-S private laneway which will also act as POPS then
the FSI jumps to ~6.93 (couldn't get an exact measure on the N-S lane. Did on the E-W as City report specifies width.

It should be said, the public and planners agree the site needs some porosity aside from servicing, and removing lanes would not strike me as good planning.
 
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