Toronto Union Park | 303.26m | 58s | Oxford Properties | Pelli Clarke Pelli

vegeta_skyline said:
Believe what ever you like to believe, but the Oxford situation is in no way compatible to the Puente de Luz bridge. The two issues there were signal sight-line concerns and an obstinate city which did not want to pay for air rights that they did not own.

In this location there are no major sight line concerns since its a low speed zone with no high masts signals. And yes its as simple as that. There are minimal requirements that Transport Canada mandates for signal sight-lines. Provided the deck is a clear span, a overhead bridge is obviously not going to impede those requirements. In addition this is not something that will ever change since train speeds will always be limited due to safety concerns and the presence of slip switches in the area.

As for air rights, well isn't the whole point of air rights the ability to make a profit on an underutilized property? CN/metrolinx don't want to hold on to air rights ad infinitum, this is the type of thing they've been waiting for. Also CN is actually very easy to deal with when it comes to acquiring any property they don't need for operational requirements as long as they receive fair market value for it. As seen by the numerous track purchases(which are far more valuable than air rights) that they have made to metrolinx over the last couple of years. Lastly I'd imagine the folks over at Oxford realize they'll have to pay for something they don't actually own and won't come into any negotiations with the same arrogance that the city had; i.e. "we owe you nil".
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No doubt VS. I appreciate the insight. I'm in the don't count your chickens before they hatch camp, that's all. Any greenspace added to downtown is a good thing; I'm just not counting on it until we hear more details.
 
councilor |ˈkouns(ə)lər|(also chiefly Brit. councillor )
noun
a member of a council.

Either way is fine. Legitimate jab at some Councillors who have used that in the past.
 
Thank you for the fascinating read E.B. I have been sitting on the fence regarding casinos and it is nice to have some unbiased evidence-based analysis. While the report focuses on smaller counties and is therefore less relevant to Toronto, it confirmed my view that both sides have a point and both the benefits and negatives are overstated. For us it depends on the arrangement we make with Queens Park I suggest.

For over a decade, advocates and opponents of casinos in the Commonwealth have argued about whether legalized gambling would produce prosperity or ruin. Our analysis — which compares the experience of counties in the United States that house casinos with those that do not — suggests that both sides are wrong.
Instead, the introduction of a casino does appear to produce a few modestly positive effects, a few modestly negative impacts, and, in several areas, no statistically significant effects at all. Specifically, we found that the introduction of casinos was associated with:
• More jobs dispersed among more people: The population of casino counties grew 5 percent faster than the population of non-casino counties and employment in casino counties grew 6.7 percent faster than in non-casino counties. As a result, there was little difference between employment rates in casino and non-casino counties.
• No impact on unemployment rates: The combination of increased population and employment meant that casino counties generally saw little change in their overall unemployment rates.
• A limited positive effect on some house prices: Median house prices in casino counties rose about $6,000 more than in non-casino counties. This effect, however, seems to have been concentrated in sparsely populated rural counties. Median house prices in more urban casino counties were about equal to those in similar non-casino counties.
• A modest increase in bankruptcies: Personal bankruptcy rates in casino counties rose by about 10 percent (from about 2.98 bankruptcies per 1,000 residents to 3.27 bankruptcies per 1,000 residents). The increase was slightly higher in more populous counties.
• More total crime but less per-capita crime: Total reported crimes can be expected to increase slightly in casino counties, but only because of population increases associated with casinos. The crime rate (the number of crimes per 1,000 residents) actually declined.
• No impact on total revenues or expenditures: The changes in total revenues and spending in areas where casinos opened in the 1980s and 1990s were not significantly different from changes in non-casino areas. Spending by local and county governments on roads, police, and education was also unaffected.
• A decline in per-capita spending and revenues: Given that population increased in areas with casinos, per-capita spending and revenues did not increase as quickly in those areas as it did in non-casino counties.
These results suggest that economic, fiscal, or public-safety factors are insufficient to either deny or invite casinos into Massachusetts. Consequently, policymakers considering proposals to allow legalized casino gambling in Massachusetts must consider other less quantitative factors.
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I'd love to see further analysis explaining why introduction of casinos should be interpreted as a causative agent in population increases. It seems that casinos would logically set up in either a) rural, underpopulated areas where there's less likely to be community opposition, or b) boomtowns. I think the places they set up are places that are naturally getting more populous anyway. It's kind of a relevant point because if you remove the notion that the casinos also caused the population increase you have to start wondering if maybe we should be looking at the gross number of incidents, and not the per capita number
 
I think any analysis should take into the account that we already have two casinos within a 1.5 hour drive (which is around the average time it takes to drive across LA): Casino Rama and Niagara Falls (and those are just the ones that I know of). It seems that only hardcore gamblers spend long hours gambling in casinos and these people can already leave Toronto for a night and get their fix, we'd only be making it easier for them and keep some of the money in the city rather than give it to other municipalities. Not to mention the out of towners who will have one more thing to keep them occupied during business trips and conventions, etc. A permament show like cirque du soleil would be pretty cool imo.
 
greenleaf said:
No doubt VS. I appreciate the insight. I'm in the don't count your chickens before they hatch camp, that's all. Any greenspace added to downtown is a good thing; I'm just not counting on it until we hear more details.
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NP and fair enough, I suppose sometimes I can be guilty of being too optimistic.
 
More food for thought from the G&M, with some specific criticisms of the Oxford design (bolded):

Twenty years ago, casinos were illegal in Canada. Windsor, desperate to remake itself, led the way for gambling in Ontario, and – kaboom – the city’s reputation went from cold to colder, exactly like a slot machine.

Now, though, half of Torontonians seem hooked on the idea.

If you want to play with the big fellas, take the time to understand the rules. Make no mistake: Casinos are meticulously planned and designed to captivate. The lugubrious man cave with its dizzying jolts of neon and shrill slots is the classic, high-testosterone model. These days, Las Vegas also offers the casino hybrid, combining gambling with a strip joint, say, or a family-fun circus.

Most recently, Roger Thomas, the head of design for Wynn Resorts, has unveiled a casino designed with a laser-sharp focus on women. Welcome to the casino’s cameo as wellness spa – a safe haven! – with white leather furniture and sparkling marble floors. This is the kind of airy playground a casino-happy Toronto can expect to luxuriate in – where time is lost and people gamble more than they had ever planned.

The assault on Toronto to buy into the casino deal has been aggressive. Last month, there were five public consultations, as well as online voting arranged by the ever-solicitous city. Paul Godfrey, chairman of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming corporation (OLG) – who in previous careers championed the ugliest of the city’s concrete armadillos by way of the Metro Convention Centre and the dumb-faced Metro Hall – has said that downtown Toronto is OLG’s first choice for a casino.

My goodness, is that intended as a blessing or an insult? What may come as news to Godfrey, 74, is that the overbloated casino template, one that the OLG is demanding must handle some 4,000 parking spaces, is an antiquated version of urbanity. Despite the conceptual loveliness of its white marble interiors and lotus blossoms floating in water, a casino has no place in a city fighting – and struggling – for a vibrant urbanity. Programmatically, it’s all wrong.

Shake down the bugaboo of casinos – our urbane fear of playing the slots next to potbellied truck drivers in Nickelback T-shirts – and unpack the latest in its sumptuous playground design: You’ll find Medusa lurking behind the colourful, hand-blown chandeliers and garden conservatories.

“Playground design is airier, and generates higher levels of pleasure, so that you’ll want to stay longer,” Karen Finlay, a professor at Ontario’s University of Guelph, and director of the Problem Gambling Research Lab. She estimates that some 300,000 people in her province are seriously addicted to gambling, meaning they’ll lie to their family or steal to support their habit. “The wealth and entitlement that the baby boomer feels,” she adds, “is a perfect match for the beautiful sanctuary of the casino.”

My vote for most beautiful sanctuary: Monte Carlo Casino, initiated to buoy the treasury of the local royalty, and designed as a beaux-arts mansion (1881), in part by Paris Opera House architect Charles Garnier. Because the grand villa, with its welcoming canopy, occupies a modest footprint next to a sweeping plaza with restaurants that spill out onto public terraces affording direct views to the waterfront, I applaud that casino’s urban grace. Foreigners arriving by luxury ships or jets are welcome there, though locals are prevented from gambling. I guess that’s called looking after your own.

The problem with almost every other casino in the world is that it’s designed to be inward looking. Great cities pour people out of buildings and into streets and parks. But check the proposed mega-casino plan by Oxford Properties Group; once three office towers and the north convention centre are demolished, the developer proposes 22 acres of continuous underground convention space – underground is certainly not the way to activate windswept Front Street – with a park that stretches over the railway lines south of the convention centre, into a zone where people do not naturally flow. The casino – about the size of the Art Gallery of Ontario – will be framed within a hotel complex flanking the western end of the site.

Compare that hermetic experience of urbanity to another epic project that Oxford is currently working on across the border: the 26-acre Hudson Yards, a mixed-use development that recently started construction on the west side of Manhattan, where open green space will connect directly to the Hudson River, and where commercial and residential towers will integrate with a school and a major cultural space. Facilitating gambling addiction is nowhere to be found on the program – that’s because Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said no to casinos for Manhattan. (The New York Times has reported that Resorts World Casino, which opened last year in neighbouring Queens, reports regular incidents of rage-filled gamblers punching slot machines when jackpots go cold.)

A few days ago, MGM Resorts International announced a partnership with commercial real-estate giant Cadillac Fairview to potentially develop and operate “a destination-style, integrated resort complex,” perhaps on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition. One-stop shopping is critical to any mega-casino development, so that revenues are generated and maintained within the complex. Don’t expect visitors to wander north to support the artists’ studios and indie fashion boutiques along Queen Street West. Cue the buses carrying voracious gamblers into the CNE, something I’ve witnessed at Casino Rama, a sad gambling hall operated by the Rama first nation, within an easy drive of Orillia, Ont., or, if you’re keen enough, Toronto.

In all of these plans, what could date Toronto badly is the requirement for those 4,000 parking spaces. Consider that other cities with mobilized leadership (New York, Chicago, Paris, London, Singapore) are marginalizing cars to make room for new public transit, more citizen fitness and short-haul car rental.

The City of Toronto’s public consultations and online voting have now closed; some time in April, the vote will go to city council, which will decide whether the casino will be coming. Bizarrely, a specific hosting fee – the city’s cut for hosting the proposed behemoth – has still not been released to the City of Toronto. Meanwhile, online gambling is on the rise; large-scale casinos in Macau and Atlantic City are in serious debt. If Toronto would yank its head out of the man cave, it would realize that many other places – Hong Kong, Rome, New York, and most of Russia – have rejected the seduction of the casino.

Toronto is a city that suffers increasingly from a scattered vision about its own urbanity – and so we blow, sadly, according to the whims of poker-face corporations. A casino undermines everything we should value about city life. It’s a gamble we can’t afford to make.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts...proposals-are-so-last-century/article8109721/
 
Isn't it clear the odds of this are next to none ?

The survey by the star said most counselors oppose this ? Why get your hopes up (assuming you're in the pro casino group). I think if a referendum was held the odds of this going through would be higher, maybe not much though as polls show there is a lot of opposition ... but anyway we no this will NOT go to a referendum ... rather it'll be a vote at city council.

So to me, its clear this isn't going anywhere in Toronto, I can see it in Markham or Vaughan ... not Mississauga, there is resistance there.
 
taal said:
Isn't it clear the odds of this are next to none ?

The survey by the star said most counselors oppose this ? Why get your hopes up (assuming you're in the pro casino group). I think if a referendum was held the odds of this going through would be higher, maybe not much though as polls show there is a lot of opposition ... but anyway we no this will NOT go to a referendum ... rather it'll be a vote at city council.

So to me, its clear this isn't going anywhere in Toronto, I can see it in Markham or Vaughan ... not Mississauga, there is resistance there.
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Many councillors will most likely change their mind at the last minute, ...unless they can verify to their constituents how they plan to substitute the revenue that may bring from a Casino...(even if its the measley 50 million the no-side keeps mentioning)
Hey "it ain't over until the fat man sings:)"
 
They don't have to explain the revenue issues. That's up to OLG to explain, and other than spending a whack of cash on desperate propaganda campaign, they've offered little in the way of accurate projections.

It would be pathetic if the remainder of this large proposal was entirely dependent on the casino alone.
 
Right, exactly, I've been straddling the fence regarding where I stand on this matter ... I think if a Casino should go anywhere in Toronto, its the convention center location. The portlands location would likely ruin any potential neighborhood fabric WT is rightly trying to build, yes I do agree some form of tourism / cultural attraction should makes it way on the eastern waterfront, but this isn't it.

I'm not a big fan of the Casino it self, partly socioeconomic reasons.

Expanding the convention center space is a huge deal for Toronto I'll argue, having a facility closer in size to 1 million square foot (in a single space so to speak) would it put on par with the largest convention centers in North America, making Toronto even more attractive for conventions of all varieties.

The parkland could be amazing as well.

I think Oxford will go ahead with a scalled down version of this plan either way, keep in mind they did buy the convention center before the idea of a Casino started to surface. You may not see the office / hotel / residential (and park), or more likely, a smaller hotel / office center. That may just be OK as well.

Part of me would like to see this go ahead though as I'm sure it'll fast track any planes Oxford had, and the park (which I'm fairly confident will not happen otherwise ... they're just dangling it, in front of us, to make the idea of a casino more consumable to the masses) would be a big loss. I'm not sure a huge amount of retail here would do Toronto good though, there is only around 200K planned for Union station, more for Spadina / Front ... Not sure 1 million square foot would really help or is needed ... granted I don't think it'll hurt neighrourhoods like Queen W / King / ... as some will argue.
 
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^I also wouldn't mind seeing an expanded convention centre, a new hotel, some office and residential towers associated with new retail (no one can argue that this isn't an appropriate location for office and other commercial development). As well, I'm all for decking over as much of the tracks as possible. But the idea that a casino is the linchpin to getting it all going - that sounds very weird, and I hope it is wrong.
 
I think the argument there is that the casino provides year round clientele for the hotel and retail to a lesser degree. Hence why I don't think that much *new* hotel / retail will happen with just a convention center expansion ... and again that's really OK ... its just the parkland that would be a loss.

Now I do hope they plan to add more density to the site, it would be perfect for a couple more office buildings ... long term though (there won't be demand short term), so just build it in such a manner that its easy to add in the future.

But things like a theater just don't make any sense. The theaters we already have aren't exactly 100% like they work back in the hay days (when there was a lot more tourism from the states), Mirvish is even considering closing one for his proposal, which speaks to the demand for Broadway scale productions. Toronto has a very good off Broadway scene though, but there are enough smaller venues scattered around the old city of Toronto.
 
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