1631 Queen St East is the proposed site of a controversial Housing Now building. It is going to be owned and run by the city, providing both affordable and market rents. But that is not why it is controversial, no one is opposed to providing more affordable housing, and I, for one, welcome more housing that is publicly-owned and run. The concern is the scale of the building proposed, and how it will impact our area, from the visual imposition, to the impacts of increased density, and the precedent it will set for future developments.
- Avoiding the Urban Design Guidelines
- Setting Precedent
- Affordability
- Excluding Harvey’s
- A Public Developer
- Increased Density
- Conclusion
Avoiding the Urban Design Guidelines
The biggest issue is yet another end run around our Queen St E urban design guidelines. The building fronting on Queen will adhere to them, 4 storeys with a setback to 6 storeys with a 45 degree angular plane, but the city states quite plainly that the guidelines do not apply to the building on Eastern, despite the fact that building will still impose on the surrounding area.
Without better architectural drawings it is hard to say if the 18 storey building conforms to the 45 degree angular plane if extended from the building on Queen, but that does not change the fact that, even if it does respect the angular plane, that is only relevant when standing directly in front of the building. From any other angle the building will be a monstrous imposition on the visual landscape.
The entire purpose of the urban design guidelines was to ensure new developments do not visually impose on the area, casting shadows and excessively blocking light and sky from view, and do not lead to tall structures looming above the surrounding lower-rise buildings. Exempting the building on Eastern from the guidelines completely negates the spirit and purpose of the guidelines.
However this is nothing new. Councillor Bradford did not live here through the OMB fights over the former Lick’s site at Queen and Kenilworth or the Shell station site on the northeast corner of Queen and Woodbine. I was part of that latter fight, and some very shady business went down. After the battle over the Lick’s site condo took so much time and effort, and the battle over the Shell site was ramping up to do the same, the city put a moratorium on development applications to develop the Queen St East Urban Design guidelines. The guidelines were meant to appease residents and ensure new developments adhered to standards that the community would not fight with every new development application.
Except then something questionable happened. During the two-week window after the guidelines had been submitted to council for approval and inclusion in the Official Plan, but before they had actually been voted on, the moratorium was mysteriously lifted, and in that time the developer snuck their application in. When the proposed development did not conform to guidelines, violating the section about maintaining the view of the fire hall clock tower, myself and others fought it at the OMB and lost on one thing and one thing only: at the time of the development application the guidelines were not in place.
The Queen St East guidelines are now an ironic joke, because the sections about maintaining views of the clock tower are still in the guidelines, despite the new condo not having setbacks and having obliterated the view of the clock tower. Are these actual guidelines for development, or just a hurdle for developers and the city to find ways to skirt around? Were these guidelines made in good faith, or were they just to appease residents so they would not challenge development?
Setting Precedent
Councillor Bradford and the city defend their position that 18 storeys will not set a precedent, but the councillor, as mentioned before, did not live here when residents saw such a precedent set. When opposing the Lick’s condo at Queen and Kenilworth it was stated at the OMB that it would not set a precedent, except when the development at the Heartwood condo at Queen and Woodbine did exactly that, the developer cited the Lick’s condo in their application. And in the end that condo also avoided using setbacks, in addition to its flagrant violation of the urban design guidelines.
More important though, is the property directly to the east of the proposed site, the movie theatre and concert venue. Once an 18 storey tower goes up next door, how enticing will it look to a developer to knock down the low rise commercial buildings to build an 18 storey section across that entire block? Or the TCHC building directly to the west that is in need of repair, how long before that is taken down and another 18 storey tower goes up?
Affordability
There is also the claim of requiring the height so that the market rent units can subsidize the affordable units. There is some subterfuge at play here, not to mention a lack of imagination and innovation. Firstly, it is ironic to claim you need greater height to pay for the affordable units when the greater height will increase the cost per unit.
Quoting from an article in Better Dwelling, “In Greater Toronto, Altus Group’s 2021 estimates show it’s a lot more expensive. For a building 6-stories and under, it costs between $195 and $265 per square foot. For a building between 13 and 39 stories, costs jump to $240 to $305 dollars per square foot. Builder costs jump between 15 and 23 percent between those sizes. It also gets more expensive as the building gets taller. That is before you add in premiums and the developer’s profit.” How many storeys could be left off to keep costs down and still maintain the desired amount of affordable units?
Excluding Harvey’s
Most baffling is the decision to allow the Harvey’s, a one storey corner building, to remain oddly nestled amongst all these towers. How many more units could we get without needing the extra height on Eastern if the city had that parcel included? The city should be making an offer, and failing that, should expropriate the land. If affordable housing is that important they should be constructing the building and using the space as affordably as possible, not building a series of towers around a one-storey restaurant on a parcel of land so small that, when surrounded by those towers, it will likely never be anything but a one storey building wasted on that corner.
A Public Developer
This is yet another P3, a public private partnership, which is really just a way for private companies to benefit from public developments. When they say “market rent units are needed to subsidize the affordable units” what they are not saying is why. If it is city-owned land to be a city-owned building, built partly with funding from senior levels of government, what need is there to pay for anything over and above that? The reason is that they must shell out profits to the private company constructing the building. Developers and builders are not benevolent providers of housing, they are in it for the money, and by partnering with for-profit companies the city is ensuring the result is more expensive because of it.
From the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, “Available research on P3s indicates:
- There is no evidence to suggest that P3s consistently cost less to deliver than traditional public projects or consistently provide better services. This is due in part to the complexity and cost of P3 procurement and contract negotiations, and the generally higher borrowing costs for private-sector partners.
- If municipalities grow too reliant on P3s, they may lose their capacity to manage projects through the retirement of key personnel or the lack of staff training and experience. This would limit the project approaches available to them in the future.
- P3s are normally used for new projects, which tend to be more attractive to potential private-sector investors. They do little to solve the more pressing problems municipalities face in funding repairs and maintaining existing infrastructure.”
So what does a city struggling to build more affordable housing do? Well, we start our own construction department in the city. Imagine no more RFP process, no more haggling over bids, no more waiting for companies and their labour to be available. Imagine TCHC repairs having a dedicated team of city construction workers and imagine every project the city wants to build just being able to start immediately.
The only thing standing in the way of such a department is the neoliberal ideology that pervades all our governments, the notion that government and the public service should not be in the business of anything that is profitable. The real fear of the private sector is that they simply will not be able to compete, that a public construction company will prove so much more efficient and affordable that people will question why they should bother with a private company again.
Increased Density
There is also the issue of the impacts of increased density in this area. There are multiple additions to density already happening, the condo at 1630 Queen, the new condo going up at the Murphy’s Law site, and the huge development going up on the southwest side of Queen and Coxwell.
Queen St is not on a subway line so there are essentially only two transit routes that go through this area, the Queen streetcar and the Coxwell bus. How is adding even more density going to be supported by our ailing transit system that is at least 20 years behind? How many more cars will this add to our congested roads? Even the Martin Goodman Trail is getting busier and busier, and it begs the question how the area will handle the strain of thousands of new people. There is not even a grocery store within walking distance.
We have already seen what over-development has done to areas like Yonge and Eglinton, and they are on the subway line. How much less livable will our area become when we try to jam in thousands more people all in the same couple of blocks around Queen and Coxwell?
Conclusion
I do not oppose building publicly-owned affordable housing at this site, but I do oppose the height, the public-private partnership, and the seeming lack of attempt to include the Harvey’s site to create a more appropriate development.
After a particularly contentious meeting about development former Councillor McMahon remarked to me, “Development is coming, whether people like it or not. They need to get on board or get out of the way.” I do not share that sentiment, as councillor I will represent the interests of residents, not the interests of developers and the construction industry.