Toronto Rail Deck District | 227.23m | 70s | Craft Dev Corp | Sweeny &Co

allengeorge said:
@TJ O'Pootertoot Please note that the renderings were supplied simply as an argument for the LPAT hearing, specifically as evidence as to why this site could support a mixed-use typology, and what such usage would look like. The proponents were hitting back at the city’s characterization of this site as park-only.

At any rate, they are not plans with architectural work, financing, unit layouts etc, so all those pro formas and details you’ve cited don’t exist yet. This is why I question its feasibility as pictured.
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Well, then, I guess my question for you is:
Given your clear certainty that all these things don't exist, how do you explain all these reports they had to file with the City, which are all quite visible and publicly available?

Development Applications

City Planning COA Application Information Center
app.toronto.ca

Civil engineering plans. Architectural plans. Vibration studies. Environmental Site Assessments. Functional Servicing Reports - and on and on.

Pretty gosh darned detailed, I'd say, for a fake project with no real background work or viability, which is really just a couple of nice renderings.

Just for everyone's entertainment, here is some of the architectural work (including the unit breakdowns) that doesn't exist yet.

1620911486219.png


1620911513729.png

1620911608904.png



allengeorge said:
Now, in the absence of publicly available information we can disagree, and revisit this conversation once someone actually starts building anything.
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Now, in the presence of publicly available information, do we still disagree or do we still have to wait until shovels go in the ground?
 
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They need to nix the parking. The grading along Iceboat and Front is a disaster under the current plan. Removing parking would help a bit. Plus, a development over a future GO line, with 2 streetcar lines bookending it shouldn't need parking. If we cant reduce it here, where can we?
 
mcornett said:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no way these condos are being built and it’s utterly delusional to think that this is some magical private sector solution that will result in any the advertised public space being built at minimal public cost.

Do people in favour of ORCA honestly think the sale of some 40-storey condos here is going to pay for the entire rail corridor to be decked over and built as a park? If this was going to cost the City $1.7 billion, why would it cost the developer any less, in particular when the engineering will be made significantly more complex by the towers and site servicing needs? The economics for building these condos at market rates simply do not make sense.

There’s a reason ORCA brought in Moshe Safdie and top planners to put together some fancy renderporn that will never be built. It was to convince the LPAT and others that somehow this was a real project, where the actual goal was to rezone the land to increase value. Now that they have been successful (assuming no change), they can either extort the City for more money to purchase the air rights or make a proposal that includes far less parkland and that will still require a large infusion of public funds for far less public space. It’s one of the most cynical scams I’ve ever seen.

And for anybody wondering why the City hasn’t moved on this until now, there were two years-long LPAT appeals by ORCA that needed to be determined before the project could even be accurately scoped or priced. What did you expect?

This. Is. A. Swindle. Get used to looking at the rail lines for another decade.
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Here's a loose comparable (note: in USD and buildings and grounds designed on an international oligarchical scale)
Hudson Yards in New York which decked over the LIRR rail yards.
HY: $25 billion project and covers 11 ha
that's $2.27b per hectare
$6 Billion of HY was funded through city and State
If Rail Deck Park footprint is 8 ha (confirm?) that comes to $18 b to construct deck, public spaces and fancy buildings... if we use HY as model
 
Broadeaves said:
Here's a loose comparable (note: in USD and buildings and grounds designed on an international oligarchical scale)
Hudson Yards in New York which decked over the LIRR rail yards.
HY: $25 billion project and covers 11 ha
that's $2.27b per hectare
$6 Billion of HY was funded through city and State
If Rail Deck Park footprint is 8 ha (confirm?) that comes to $18 b to construct deck, public spaces and fancy buildings... if we use HY as model
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🍎🍊
The context is so different, including that those 11 ha were very wide over a huge number of tracks, and this corridor is long, and far narrower, over the tracks.
They built buildings over the tracks, this project is only putting the buildings along the fringe etc. etc.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the cost estimates we've seen are low-balled; but that applies to the City's plans just as much as to the developer's.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
🍎🍊
The context is so different, including that those 11 ha were very wide over a huge number of tracks, and this corridor is long, and far narrower, over the tracks.
They built buildings over the tracks, this project is only putting the buildings along the fringe etc. etc.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the cost estimates we've seen are low-balled; but that applies to the City's plans just as much as to the developer's.
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True. Agreed about estimates. If you take into account reduced scale of decking, CAD$, cheaper buildings and public realm, where would that land...
 
Broadeaves said:
True. Agreed about estimates. If you take into account reduced scale of decking, CAD$, cheaper buildings and public realm, where would that land...
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Hard to know but it's fair to say the best we can do is look at Hudson Yards and projects like that and do estimates, as you've done.
We just need to be aware of the limits of that, especially since this City has a habit of just kinda copying its version of what NYC does :)
 
allengeorge said:
@TJ O'Pootertoot You were right and I was wrong. I should have done better research.

I'll still wait and see what they build, but you're absolutely right that they've gone well beyond concept stage. Thanks for linking those documents for me - and everyone else!
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My pleasure, seriously. And apologies for the light sarcasm :)

Not everyone would know where to look and I do sincerely understand the scepticism about all this. There are all sorts of ways it could still fall apart but I think the city thought everyone would see their renderings and buy into their happy story about how mean developers were pulling a fast one to steal parkland from deserving residents.

I'm not sure this development can be pulled off but that's their challenge to meet and I think they at least successfully called the city's bluff to this point. As for the rest... Time will tell!
 
ciceror said:
This shot is taken from their video showing the view from the steel bridge. the elevation looks approximately 9 times the size of the person next to it. if the average person is 1.7 meters, the elevation of the park from this street looks be in the ballpark of 15 meters.

Additionally, the street car is known be to be 3.8 meters, and it seems the elevation is 4 times its height which again gives you 15 meters.


View attachment 319156
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Thanks, took you video image - and created as close a match as I could find on Google...

1620920834040.png
 
WislaHD said:
Parking should really be eliminated from this site.
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IIRC, they're putting the parking on lands that are basically unusable anyway.
Basically the buildings are going over where there is actual land now and then the park is going over the rail tracks, with the parking tucked in underneath, over the rail CORRIDOR, but where the tracks aren't.

I was going to say I'm too lazy to look up the stats but I actually just posted them above :)
874 spaces for 3,500 units is a 0.24 blended rate which is very low (though there are a very few downtown sites that have less, or even zero).

So you could argue, on principle, they should have ZERO spots, but you'd just be wasting space below grade and the opportunity for there to be a pretty minimal amount of parking and, I guess, saving a teeny bit of traffic. If they were putting in underground parking, especially more of it, I'd agree but this is really just using dead space (I guess you can kinda see it in the image I posted a few posts back too...)

[And, it occurs to me, for people wondering about the financing, there are likely huge cost savings from not having to provide underground parking. Not enough to off-set the decking costs, I'm sure, but enough to at least mitigate it a bit.]
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
IIRC, they're putting the parking on lands that are basically unusable anyway.
Basically the buildings are going over where there is actual land now and then the park is going over the rail tracks, with the parking tucked in underneath, over the rail CORRIDOR, but where the tracks aren't.

I was going to say I'm too lazy to look up the stats but I actually just posted them above :)
874 spaces for 3,500 units is a 0.24 blended rate which is very low (though there are a very few downtown sites that have less, or even zero).

So you could argue, on principle, they should have ZERO spots, but you'd just be wasting space below grade and the opportunity for there to be a pretty minimal amount of parking and, I guess, saving a teeny bit of traffic. If they were putting in underground parking, especially more of it, I'd agree but this is really just using dead space (I guess you can kinda see it in the image I posted a few posts back too...)

[And, it occurs to me, for people wondering about the financing, there are likely huge cost savings from not having to provide underground parking. Not enough to off-set the decking costs, I'm sure, but enough to at least mitigate it a bit.]
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You're right in everything you say, but I was actually thinking that the park doesn't have to be so elevated above grade level if the parking level was removed.

I am probably missing something crucial engineering-wise, however.
 
WislaHD said:
Parking should really be eliminated from this site.
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Though I have not owed a car for ages and agree that there should be less parking, I think we are a VERY long time away from being able to have zero parking. Many people do need a car for work and these need to be parked somewhere and NOT on the street.
 
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