[wardlow]

The live-work townhouse units were taken out because of a couple of things: (1) the Winter Club, who previously owned the land, put a caveat on the sale that any development would have a high amount of accessory parking (1.5 stalls per unit). The developer could have gotten a major reduction through a variance, but they weren’t allowed to because of the caveat. Apparently the Winter Club was worried about spillover parking taking up their many surface parking spots around their dumpy fortress of a building.

(2) The property is on a combined sewer, and regulations for such a big development required them to instill an underground tank, which would have cost a lot. Not sure if they don’t need to do this without the townhouse units or what.

At this point, they are still planning on having a ground floor commercial unit, and the ground floor of the main 18-storey complex is supposed to be quite permeable. Not as great as it could have been, but more pedestrian-friendly than a good number of proposed East Exchange/Portage and Main developments I’ve seen lately.