Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

TheTigerMaster said:
Regarding the development potential of York Mills Station on Don Mills:
Immediately west of Don Mills there is a large, low density commercial and industrial area. This is an area that might be ideal for a large scale redevelopment, similar to the proposal Unilever lands. This area is roughly centred at York Mills @ Lesmill Road, which is where I'd put York Mills Station for the Don Mills line. I envision an urban area, with good mixture of commercial, residential, mid and high rise.
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I like this idea. A station at York Mills and Don Mills has development really only on 1 corner (SW) and the other 3 corners are mostly floodplane. Your proposal would put the station in the middle of an area that could be redeveloped. They could even put a connection to the GO RH line (although it's very close to Oriole), although that's probably not necessary.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I know City Planing is serious about maintaining industrial employment lands, so I'd expect some of this land would need to be set aside for that purpose.
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It's not just city planning that's serious about maintaining industrial lands, it's the province as well. Industrial/employment lands have some of the highest levels of protection of any land use. If you want to convert industrial land to, say, residential, you have to do a city-wide review to prove that there's a need for residential at that location, the employment use isn't needed, and that the employment area will still be viable. This isn't an employment area that's emptying out like the waterfront or the warehouse districts around downtown. It's, as far as I can tell, an area that's functioning how it was designed and exactly the kind of employment area the city and province want to protect. In other words, all of the land in that area will likely be kept for employment purposes. The only intensification you're likely to see is office buildings.

An exception might be along York Mills where the land is mostly service commercial as opposed to industrial and office. The Longo's plaza for example. But even that area isn't an Avenue in the Official Plan so it doesn't appear that the city has mixed use intensification in mind.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
They're not cutting corners; they're evaluating all potential options. Something like 40 options (including busses) were considered before they were whittled down to the three we have today. Obviously the LRT won't be chosen, as it performs poorly compared to the DRL. If there was a conspiracy to deliver a "quick-fix ad hoc relief line", the DRL probably wouldn't perform as incredibly well as it did in the study.

It's critical to evaluate all potential options. We really won't know how well an option will perform until proper modelling is done. Even DRL Long is one of those crazy pie-in-the-sky ideas that could've been dismissed if it were not for these evaluations. It wasn't that long ago where you'd be scoffed at for suggesting a Don Mills subway line.
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For sure. And I'm definitely glad Metrolinx has gotten to this stage where it's just three proposals (whittled down from dozens). But even though SHORT performs better than LRT, and costs the same; I think it and LONG both potentially might be ruled out by Metrolinx because of their long construction time. Seeing that they involve tunneling, I'd put them in the 10-15yr time frame. The LRT option on the other hand, although performing the least well of the three, does in fact offer the benefit of being able to be built quickly. It would use existing corridors, and run on-street downtown. So maybe it'd take just 5yrs from YRNS' completion. This and its low per km cost may be a key reason why it was shortlisted. So I wouldn't rule out LRT, combined with a B-Y rebuild, as potentially being seen as the better option by Metrolinx.

TheTigerMaster said:
Regarding the development potential of York Mills Station on Don Mills:

Immediately west of Don Mills there is a large, low density commercial and industrial area. This is an area that might be ideal for a large scale redevelopment, similar to the proposal Unilever lands. This area is roughly centred at York Mills @ Lesmill Road, which is where I'd put York Mills Station for the Don Mills line. I envision an urban area, with good mixture of commercial, residential, mid and high rise.

Any redevelopment of the area would likely include extensive reconfiguration of the local road network, since the area clearly was not designed with high density commercial and residential in mind.

View attachment 49213

The connectivity of this neighbourhood would potentially make it one of Toronto's most attractive. Just about all of the neighbourhood would be walking distance (800 meters) from York Mills subway station, and from there it would be less than 5 minutes to the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and Fairview Mall and less than 15 minutes to downtown. There would be opportunities for two additional stations in the north and south ends of the neighbourhood (denoted by grey pins on the map). Finally, the DVP and 401 are both only minutes away.

The neighbourhood would be roughly 1.20 km2, 295 acres. In contrast, the Unilever lands proposed for redevelopment is 0.25km2, 60 acres in size and CityPlace is 0.4km2, 96 acres. This is a really large area we'd be working with.

I know City Planing is serious about maintaining industrial employment lands, so I'd expect some of this land would need to be set aside for that purpose.

The detour of the Don Mills line to Lesmill Road likely wouldn't add too much cost. It would add roughly 100 to 200 meters onto the the length of the line.

A new neighbourhood in this area would ideal for a Tax Increment Financing scheme, similar to Unilever. Hopefully it would be able to generate a few hundred million to contribute to the costs of building DRL LONG.

Thoughts?
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Interesting. A couple things: I think it'd be better to ID individual quadrants or blocks, or the very large warehouses/properties - instead of the entire business park. Unilever works well because it's one individual site that is massive, and it's adjacent to a large City yard that will be included in the development.

Another thing is your routing of the DRL. When I started drawing fantasy maps, I found it makes more sense to follow public right-of-ways as much as possible - for the reason that it makes design easier and reduces the need to obtain subsurface property rights from private landowners. So in this case, a line could be either completely along Don Mills. Or south of the 401 use Betty Sutherland park and/or the greenspace west of Don Mills Rd. I don't see any existing roads through the business park that could be followed, so it may make sense to keep it on Don Mills.

With the LRT option that's been given by Metrolinx, I'd assume their routing (if originating from Don Mills stn) would follow Don Mills, then use the greenspace as much as possible, then use Bond to get to the Leaside Spur. But because they claimed it's grade-separate outside of downtown, I'd assume it to originate from Leslie Stn, and be built alongside the RH corridor to the Leaside Spur -> Don Branch -> Front St(?) -> Union.
 
MisterF said:
It's not just city planning that's serious about maintaining industrial lands, it's the province as well. Industrial/employment lands have some of the highest levels of protection of any land use. If you want to convert industrial land to, say, residential, you have to do a city-wide review to prove that there's a need for residential at that location, the employment use isn't needed, and that the employment area will still be viable. This isn't an employment area that's emptying out like the waterfront or the warehouse districts around downtown. It's, as far as I can tell, an area that's functioning how it was designed and exactly the kind of employment area the city and province want to protect. In other words, all of the land in that area will likely be kept for employment purposes. The only intensification you're likely to see is office buildings.
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I am not exactly sure that the employment in this area is all that viable. Major employers are leaving the area (Wrigleys, Celestica) and I am sure many smaller ones are too. It is not performing well, and with a subway these areas will be prime locations for redevelopment. From a city planning perspective, it is a little daft to enforce those restrictions.

I bet it just takes just one developer to succeed in convincing the OMB to construct their condo and the precedent will be set.

PL1 said:
I like this idea. A station at York Mills and Don Mills has development really only on 1 corner (SW) and the other 3 corners are mostly floodplane. Your proposal would put the station in the middle of an area that could be redeveloped. They could even put a connection to the GO RH line (although it's very close to Oriole), although that's probably not necessary.
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Oriole should be moved to Leslie station on Sheppard. That should give it enough stop-space for a York Mills station.

I really like your proposal TigerMaster. I'll definitely be advocating for it in the future. I wonder how your alignment choice would fare in comparison to the Don Mills alignment that has to cross the river, floodplains and different elevations and have an awkward York Mills station.

Between York Mills, Sheppard, Shops at Don Mills at Lawrence, and all that developable land around Eglinton, the DRL-Long option can probably support a significant amount of Toronto's future housing needs.
 
MisterF said:
It's not just city planning that's serious about maintaining industrial lands, it's the province as well. Industrial/employment lands have some of the highest levels of protection of any land use. If you want to convert industrial land to, say, residential, you have to do a city-wide review to prove that there's a need for residential at that location, the employment use isn't needed, and that the employment area will still be viable. This isn't an employment area that's emptying out like the waterfront or the warehouse districts around downtown. It's, as far as I can tell, an area that's functioning how it was designed and exactly the kind of employment area the city and province want to protect. In other words, all of the land in that area will likely be kept for employment purposes. The only intensification you're likely to see is office buildings.

An exception might be along York Mills where the land is mostly service commercial as opposed to industrial and office. The Longo's plaza for example. But even that area isn't an Avenue in the Official Plan so it doesn't appear that the city has mixed use intensification in mind.
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Take a look at City Planning's Zoning By-law map: http://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toro...ent/files/pdf/city-wide_allzones_569-2013.pdf

On the south side of the York Mills and Lesmill area, just about all of that area is zoned for industrial.

On the north side, a relatively small area has been zoned for industrial employment lands. The rest shows no zoning information. So it's possible that any redevelopment would be limited to the north side, which would still make for a very large scale redevelopment (about 175 acres vs. the 295 acre that I originally proposed).

However, I'm not certain how the province goes about designating what is industrial lands. Would they determine that solely on the zoning by laws for the area (as shown in the aforementioned map), or would they base it on the actual land use of the area?

Looking at street view images of the area, it appears that the north side is mainly commercial business parks. Hopefully this would make it eligible for redevelopment.
 
Edward Skira said:
Even York Mills is probably superior at Don Mills. There's a huge amount of under-utilized land on the southwest corner that could be developed.
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True. But development at York Mills @ Don Mills would be limited to the southwest corner, while at York Mills and Lesmill all four corners would be eligible for redevelopment.

Lesmill is only about 300 meters west of Don Mills, so positioning the station there doesn't preclude redevelopment on the southwest corner York Mills @ Don Mills. It'll just make it more central, relative to the potential developable land.
 
WislaHD said:
From a city planning perspective, it is a little daft to enforce those restrictions.
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Well, the bigger issue is valid. If the City gives up all its job-creating areas, where will people find work? Can the City still create jobs and attract investment if there is no industry? And if Torontonians don't work in the City, because the industry is further away, what does that do to their commute and to the city's transit requirements?

In terms of the Relief line ideas being discussed - the question is, how much of the projected transit use and future demand (especially on Yonge) is attributable to people working in this area? The only demand in an industrial area is work related, whereas demand in residential areas will be work, school, recreation, health care, etc etc. If you convert land to residential, then yes ridership will go up. Do you need this growth to support this particular routing? I would argue, justify the line based on ridership with the status quo. If you get more riders through conversion, that's gravy. There is nothing wrong with having good transit through a job creation area.

I bet it just takes just one developer to succeed in convincing the OMB to construct their condo and the precedent will be set.
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This is absolutely true. The "no conversion of industrial lands" thing is one of the few areas where the OMB is forced to defer to planning, instead of giving developers whatever they ask for. Which is why government is clinging to it tenaciously.

A couple of documents worth browsing -
http://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toro...df/consultation-summary-report-appendices.pdf
http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/stuckintraffic/docs/sustainable.pdf

- Paul
 
How can one want to have as many job opportunities close to them but at the same time want to rezone industrial lands for residential. Perhaps in the future jobs will be coming back to Toronto. We shouldn't assume the 905 exodus is indefinite.

BTW this is why we need to build regional transit because we aren't doing our best to keep the jobswithin toronto.
 
44 North said:
Another thing is your routing of the DRL. When I started drawing fantasy maps, I found it makes more sense to follow public right-of-ways as much as possible - for the reason that it makes design easier and reduces the need to obtain subsurface property rights from private landowners. So in this case, a line could be either completely along Don Mills. Or south of the 401 use Betty Sutherland park and/or the greenspace west of Don Mills Rd. I don't see any existing roads through the business park that could be followed, so it may make sense to keep it on Don Mills.
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The routing of the map was lazily done. I just took the most direct route to York Mills @ Lesmill, to reduce the amount of additional tunnel and associated costs that would be built to accommodate the detour.

A big part of the reason why I proposed this was because it was ideal for Tax Increment Financing. My hope is that redevelopments in the area would be able to generate a few hundred million that can help pay for DRL LONG. If that this area were to generate $200 Million in funds for DRL LONG, even $50 Million in additional contraction costs for the detour is significant, so the detour would need to be built as low cost as possible. Obviously, if this were to ever be built, people a lot more knowledgable than me would figure out the ideal route.

Other potential areas for a TIF scheme would be Don Mills @ Lawrence, Don Mills @ Eglinton, Flemingdon Park, Thorncliffe Park, Pape @ Danforth, Gerrard, and Unilever. Between all these areas, a big part of the DRL LONG could be paid for with TIF.
 
crs1026 said:
In terms of the Relief line ideas being discussed - the question is, how much of the projected transit use and future demand (especially on Yonge) is attributable to people working in this area? The only demand in an industrial area is work related, whereas demand in residential areas will be work, school, recreation, health care, etc etc. If you convert land to residential, then yes ridership will go up. Do you need this growth to support this particular routing? I would argue, justify the line based on ridership with the status quo. If you get more riders through conversion, that's gravy. There is nothing wrong with having good transit through a job creation area.
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There's more than enough justification for DRL LONG with current ridership. The real value with this is the TIF potential to pay for the DRL.

I'd expect that the tax revenues and land value at York Mills @ Don Mills are lower than at any point along the DRL LONG route. That means that there is opportunity to capture huge revenues for the DRL once the station and intensification in the proposed area raises land values. As I mentioned in my original post, the connectivity of this area would likely make it one of the more attractive places and expensive places to live and do business in the city. The delta between current land values and future land values (with DRL and redevelopment) might be quite large, and that means a lot of revenue for the DRL once the TIF scheme is implemented.
 
smallspy said:
In the floodplain? Good luck with that.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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Is the SW corner of Don Mills and York Mills a floodplain? I thought is was all built after Hurricane Hazel and we don't build in floodplains. The other 3 corners yes, but not SW.
 
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