Corporate Social Responsibility : Development News

The provincial government has introduced legislation that gives the city the power to require developers to include affordable housing in their residential projects.
 
The Promoting Affordable Housing Act will permit municipalities to create inclusionary  zones, areas in which all new residential developments would be required to include affordable housing. Although developers are often able to override city dictums by appealing decisions to the Ontario Municipal Board, it would be mostly prohibited in these cases.
 
“Appeals of inclusionary zoning official plan policies and zoning by-laws to the Ontario Municipal Board would not be permitted, except by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing,” states the news release. “Under the proposed changes, municipalities could not accept cash-in-lieu of affordable units, and developers could not provide affordable units on another site.”
 
The city’s housing advocate, Councillor Ana Bailão, welcomed the legislation, but said the city still has a lot of work to day to create effective inclusionary zoning policies.
 
“We look forward to working with all stakeholders to ensure inclusionary zoning delivers real results for people in need of affordable homes,” Bailão stated in a news release. “However, it is important to remember that inclusionary zoning will not solve Toronto’s housing crisis on its own. Inclusionary zoning will join the growing menu of tools the city has to support our affordable housing agenda.”
 
The province considers a home affordable when residents do not pay more than 30 per cent of gross income on annual accommodation costs or, the purchase or rental price is at least 10 per cent below average market value.
 
The province is looking for public input on the bill until August 16. Inclusionary zoning has been used extensively by communities around the world, including in England and in over 500 municipalities in the United States.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing

Ontario should act quickly to allow Toronto to roll out inclusionary zoning to take advantage of the city’s building boom, says the group Social Planning Toronto and a network of other community groups.
 
On Monday, the province announced “a suite of legislative and policy measures” combined with $178-million over three years, to increase access to affordable and adequate housing in Ontario. Part of that suite is granting cities the power to practice inclusionary zoning—requiring developers to build a certain number of affordable housing units as part of each development project that meets the criteria. Though the news was welcomed by affordable housing advocates, the timeline and the process remain unclear.
 
“The devil is in the details. They’ve said they’ll introduce legislation ‘soon’ and the definition of soon matters,” says Sean Meagher, executive director of Social Planning Toronto. “This is enabling legislation that allows the municipalities to create these laws.”
 
Though the City of Toronto has done some preliminary work on the issue, Meagher says it’s hard for staff to draw up proposed inclusionary zoning bylaws without knowing what the provincial legislation will look like. A prolonged provincial process followed by extended discussions at the city level could delay the construction of affordable housing for years. “You can’t bring in legislation that restricts development without talking to the development community and the people of Toronto. Every delay at the provincial level means it will be a long time before we see the benefits,” he says.
 
Meagher estimates that if Toronto had had inclusionary zoning for the last five years, even the most conservative requirements on developers would have generated about 12,000 new affordable housing units. “Every delay means we’ve missed critical opportunities,” he says. “Inclusionary zoning only helps when people are building. You have to capture the moments when there is development going on.”
 
Some version of the strategy has been tried in U.S. cities but inclusionary zoning hasn’t caught on in Canada, partly because provinces here often keep their municipalities on short leashes.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Sean Meagher

Private vehicle dropoffs and pick-ups at Billy Bishop City Airport has dropped by more than 40 per cent since 2012 as the number of people walking, biking and taking transit has grown to 37 per cent, up from 27 per cent just three years ago.

That shift has occurred even the airport’s overall passenger traffic has increased from 2.3 million in 2012 to an estimated 2.5 million last year, according to PortsToronto’s first annual sustainability report. The document looks at how the government authority is doing in environmental protection, community engagement and economic performance at its properties including he Island airport, the Outer Harbour Marina and Terminals 51 and 52 in the portlands.

“The City of Toronto recognizes that rapid residential and business development in the area, with no significant improvement in infrastructure, roads and transit, has led to issues of congestion and poor traffic flow,” states the report, which was published this week. “As such, the City of Toronto began work in 2015 on a Bathurst Quay Neighbourhood Plan to study improvements that can be made to ensure that this mixed-use community continues to thrive. For its part, Billy Bishop Airport continues to encourage its travellers to walk, bike, shuttle or take transit to the airport and has put measures in place to encourage this shift. This includes the addition of a fourth shuttle bus in 2015 to make this option even more convenient.”

Some of the changes in travel patterns might be attributed to the opening of the new pedestrian tunnel to the airport, which replaces the chore of taking the ferry with a six-minute journey beneath Lake Ontario. The $82.5-million tunnel opened in July and as well as improving flow, includes new water and sewer mains to the Toronto Islands, “saving Toronto taxpayers an estimated $10 million in duplicate construction costs,” states the report. “The new city water and sewage mains now provide reliable services to the Toronto Islands and replace existing pipes that date back to the 1950s.”

Other tidbits from the report: PortsToronto dredged 40,000 tonnes of material from the mouth of the Don River last year, up from 33,000 tones last year. The agency generated more than $8 million in revenue for governments last year. An engine maintenance run-up enclosure intended to reduce the noise impact of the airport is expected to be built in 2016.

A less quantitative effort saw the agency work with Evergreen Canada to green playground spaces at six waterfront and downtown primary schools. “Many of the schools selected for the program are located in high-traffic neighbourhoods in the downtown core where there is a limited ability to connect with nature due to a lack of greenspace. The projects supported through PortsToronto‘s contribution to this program range from removing asphalt and planting native plants and vegetable gardens, to creating stone seating and establishing shade trees to enable outdoor classroom experiences, to a water wall that will teach children about the properties of water,” states the report.

Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: PortsToronto

When rental apartment developer Oben Flats filed its application to redevelop the property at 307 Sherbourne, kitty-corner from Allan Gardens, the site had been vacant for more than a decade after its last occupant, a gas station, closed up shop.
 
So a couple of years for city approval and construction of a 13-storey residential rental apartment building with 94 dwelling units didn’t seem so long to wait. Yet Oben Flats decided it would animate the site in the meantime in order to forge connections with their future neighbours. Last week, working the PATCH public art project, the developer unveiled a mural that signals that the space will soon be put to better use. Danny Brown, an urban planner at Urban Strategies and a local resident, helped spearheaded the initiative after an earlier guerilla beautification of the site.
 
“We think of ourselves as a different developer. We didn’t want to just leave it empty like that,” says Max Koerner, project coordinator at Oben Flats. Partnering with the David Suzuki Foundation and Sustainable TO, the company is planning to have host facilities and activities as varied as a skating rink, pollinator garden or temporary market. Following feedback from the community, Koerner expects that a Halloween gathering and other small events could take place over the fall and winter before the space is greened up in the spring.
 
In condo-obsessed Toronto, new downtown rental buildings have been few and far between. Many high-rises apartment buildings built in the 1960s and ’70s are often seen as outdated and rundown. Oben Flats, which originated in Germany in 2007, is launching into the Toronto market with three rental projects, the first of which, in Leslieville, will open in 2016. (The company has already built six for-sale townhouses on Harbord Street.) The company has focused on eye-catching design and the demands of young Torontonians who may not be able to afford to buy, but still want modern digs.
 
“These so-called Millennials appear to be more interested in design and style,” says Koerner.
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Max Koerner

Architects can do more than just design your building. If you get them to believe in your project, they can help you raise the money to get it built.

It turns out that those renderings that architects do, sometimes for free, sometimes on spec, can be powerful tools to get developers, backers and government agencies interested in a project. When Tony Azevedo wanted to build a seven-storey condo in his old neighbourhood on Dundas West, for instance, he got Richard Witt, then with RAW, to do up an attractive rendering package, and it was on the strength of that package that Azevedo was able to make enough in pre-sales to actually start digging.

They can be even more powerful when the project is not-for-profit.

"Eva’s Initiatives, which provides housing and training for underhoused and homeless youth, are on Ordinance Street," says Janna Levitt of LGA Architectural Partners, who spoke with Yonge Street after speaking on a recent panel about design and social change. "They’re getting kicked out because of condos. They got a new location [city councillor] Adam Vaughan helped them find, and we’ re working with them to develop packages to go out and get funding."

It’s a skill some firms, such as LGA, have developed over time as they realized the power of the rendering to make a project seem more real to potential clients.

"I would say that at this point we have the expertise," Levitt says. "It became one of the things that we realized we were doing quite often. In our case, it was because the people we were doing it for were really forward-thinking people who had ideas about the way a certain program should run and didn’t understand it would cost additional money to do that, or who were just going out on a limb."

Levitt sees it as a way for architects to be "agents of change."

"You can, through your work, effect change on a whole lot of levels with every building," Levitt says, "and that’s very exciting."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Janna Levitt

It’s easy for city-dwellers to slip into the misconception that green building is an urban issue. But as the 14th annual Enerquality Awards gala in Niagara Falls has just reminded us, suburban doesn’t always mean what we think it means.

Take Sloot Construction, for instance. They’re a homebuilder in and around Guelph, and they built Ontario’s first house under the new Energy Star for New Homes Standard in April for which, among other things, they won the Building Innovation Award for "technical excellence while implementing high-performance building practices."

Or Steve Snider Construction, out of Port Perry, who started building R-2000 homes as early as 1986, and exclusively starting in the 1990s. He got the Green Renovation Project of the Year award.

"Sloot and Sniderman are standouts," says Corey McBurney, Enerquality's president. "They're the thin edge of the wedge." Because they are small operators in what McBurney calls small community housing markets (everything but the GTA), they're able to do things, like build homes to the very high R-2000 standard, that McBurney estimates are almost a decade ahead of what production builders like Mattamy Homes (which McBurney estimates builds 2,400 homes a year) can do in the GTA.

Suburbs and exurbs leading the charge? Who knew?

But Toronto wasn’t entirely left out. Empire Communities took home the big prize, Ontario Green Builder of the Year. Based in Vaughan, Empire is the developer behind Mark, Rain, Beyond the Sea, Modern, Fly, The Hub and Schoolhouse, all in the downtown core, along with projects in Markham, Mississauga, Brampton and beyond.

Enerquality, founded in 1998, is an association that runs programs described as being "designed to encourage and support developers, builders and renovators improve building performance and reduce the environmental impact of housing."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sarah Margolius

Row 1 left to right
Doug Tarry, Doug Tarry Homes, Andy Goyda, Owens Corning, John Sloot, Sloot Construction, Jim Dunstan, Union Gas, Larry Brydon, Ozz Electric, Rick Martins, Eastforest Homes
 
Row 2 left to right
Nikki Bettinelli, Empire Communities, Michelle Vestergaard, Enbridge Gas, Paul Golini, Empire Communities, Shannon Bertuzzi, Enbridge Gas, Darlene Fraser, Eastforest Homes, Carrie Alexander, Steven Doty, Empire Communities
 
Row 3 left to right
Corey McBurney, EnerQuality, Margaret Ward, Enbridge Gas, Dorothy Stewart, Enbridge Gas, Stephen Doty, Empire Communities

In proof that a city is more than its political parts, Toronto has been named one of the world’s 7 most intelligent communities.

The designation comes from the Intelligent Community Forum, the 13-year-old international organization that rates communities based on "policies and practices that are creating positive economic, governing and social activity."

The 2014 shortlist is the most geographically concentrated in the ICF’s history, with two cities each from Taiwan and the US, and three from Canada.

The list includes Hsinchu City and New Taipei City in Taiwan, Arlington, Virginia, and Columbus, Ohio, and Kingston, Winnipeg and Toronto.

According to the ICF, Toronto is cited specifically for its "renowned waterfront development that will provide Internet at 500 times the speed of conventional residential networks."

Representatives from the ICF will be visiting the shortlisted cities over the next several months, and the final decision will be made in New York City in June.

According to Kristina Verner, Waterfront Toronto’s director of Intelligent Communities, the importance of this designation "is largely economic development, in terms of brand recognition that there is the technological capacity, as well as the innovation and workforce capacity, for emerging businesses."

Last year’s winner was Taichung City, Taiwan. Toronto was also on last year's shortlist.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kristina Verner

The amount of money developers are subsidizing the city’s infrastructure with is going up dramatically.

Development charges are the way the city extracts money from the companies building all our new condos and office towers to help defray the costs of, among other things, transit, water and sewer, roads and parks. They come up for renewal every five years, but this year, the city in its eagerness has already reached the penultimate step in approving an average of a 70 per cent increase in the rates seven months in advance of the April deadline.

"For a two-bedroom condo, the rates are increasing about 70 per cent, from about $12,000 a unit to just over $21,000," says Rob Hatton, the director of strategic initiatives in the city’s corporate finance division.

The almost completed Aura at College Park, for instance, would pay the city and its residents about $20 million in development charges under the new system.

The rates for single-family dwellings is rising even higher, by 78 per cent.

"It’s a substantial increase," Hatton says, pointing out that even thought it’s slightly less than the last increase five years ago, that increase was belayed in response to the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

"The city is clearly growing," he says, "so we’ve had to make significant investments to maintain service levels."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Rob Hatton

For the first time since 2010, the city's got a new standard for just how green all our new buildings must be.

The new Toronto Green Standard divides buildings into two tiers. Requirements for the first tier are mandatory, and include energy efficiency targets 15 per cent higher than the Ontario Building Code and tree planting that’s in line with the city’s 40 per cent canopy.

Tier two goes much further, mandating, for instance, that wiring must be roughed in to every level of parking, allowing the installation of electric vehicle charging at any or every parking space, energy efficiency 25 per cent higher than the building code, and the so-called re-use option, which encourages developers to retain facades, walls and floors of existing buildings not listed on the heritage register rather than demolish them wholesale. The goal is not only to preserve the city’s built form, but to stem the tide of building materials into our landfills.

"Adaptive reuse is a great thing," says Joe D’Abramo, the city’s director of zoning and environmental planning, "and we’ll give them credit if they do that."

Developers who check off at least eight requirements on the tier 2 list are eligible to receive a 20 per cent discount on their development charges, which can amount to more than $10,000 per unit.

One final change that will please some and rile others: New buildings in the inner city, defined as east of the Humber, south of Lawrence, and west of Victoria Park, now have to provide bicycle parking at the rate of one per residential unit. Outside those limits, the rate is 0.75 per unit.

The new Green Standard goes into effect in January.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Joe D’Abramo

If  you’ve been to lower Yonge Street at any point this summer, you’ll have noticed that Temperance Street, located just north of Adelaide, has utterly changed.

It used to be a side street. At some point, there was a café there haunted mostly by bike couriers. It was the sort of street that even native downtowners might not be able to place if it came up in conversation (which, naturally, it never would).

But thanks to developer Clayton Smith, it’s now the place to be on lower Yonge.

With Dineen Café right on the corner, backed up by The Chase Fish & Oyster and, upstairs, the higher-end Chase (with its rooftop balcony), all with sidewalk patios, the street is precisely what Woodcliffe wants Market Street to be, and what MOD Developments wants for St. Nicholas Street, part of its Five St. Joseph development, to be: A lively, populated street that serves both the developer’s building and becomes a neighbourhood hub. The fact that Smith has succeeded ought to give hope to those other developers, and also raise the bar for them.

"It's tough to find those unique destinations in the core," Smith says. "King West has that kind of feel, and by the Mirvish buildings, but not in the core really. That was the vision."

One of the reasons it’s so populated is that the renovation, a pristine example of adaptive reuse, was done so thoroughly and so well.

"We had some tremendous trades on the site," Smith says, quick to point out where that particular portion of the credit is due. "The copper work was amazing."

Some of the other credit goes to architect George Robb and Empire Restoration.

But it's Smith's baby, and his wheelhouse. He's also the guy who recently bought the Flatiron Building from the city’s other prominent restorative developer, Woodcliffe.

It's not the most profitable way of going about developing a site. Smith admits it would have been cheaper to tear the 117-year-old building down and put up something more straightforward. He even found a 2009 demolition permit issued to a previous owner. (Phew.)

But he’s not interested in that kind of developing. He even refused Starbucks' enthusiastic offer to take the corner space from him on very favourable terms, and leased it to John Young to make the Dineen Café, named for the building, itself named for its original owner and occupier, W. and D. Dineen Co. hatters and furriers.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Clayton Smith

A fire ejected Home Ownership Alternatives, along with its newly appointed CEO, from their Queen Street East offices over the Victoria Day weekend.

They’ve since relocated to 2300 Yonge Street until their old offices can be rehabilitated from the water damage. It’s an extra challenge for their newly appointed CEO, Jens Lohmueller, the Hamburg native and graduate of the University of Western Ontario who just took over the organization.

It’s a relatively small one compared to his larger brief, which is to expand HOA out of Ontario and into Vancouver and even Africa.

"We've already had to make little tweaks to accommodate partners -- cities, towns and regions -- so I think there will be an ability to change as we go along," he says. 

It will be a massive change for the organization, which has a staff of, in Lohmueller’s words, "four or five."

Though their focus will remain on families, Lohmueller says that could change in the future, implying that they might take up the Artscape model and get into making office and studio space affordable in similar ways to their current down payment-loan system for homeowners across southern Ontario.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jens Lohmueller

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].