Quote:
Originally Posted by fuller
That could be it, but I've also heard the limit defended as providing an avenue toward eventual Section 37 negotiations for local benefits to be secured in return for higher and denser developments. If height is given as-of-right, then what is the City to bargain with?
Jason Thorne has also argued the height limit serves to ground expectations on land values that are otherwise *unlimited* in the minds of land holders who would to sell to potential developers.
These lands could sit forever undeveloped while current owners bide their time holding out for even higher hoped-for returns that nobody can pay. So the land sits, empty and unproductive.
The next problem is that even if a sale price is agreed upon, then, the new owner will have paid so much the land that they'll be unable to attain financing to build the project under the market conditions of the time.
So then the land remains empty but under new ownership, waiting for the right market conditions to form, to obtain financing to build. This can go on forever...
Any new development that actually gets built will bring in new revenue to the City.
Lands that are being held by land speculators or are held by actual developers who can't build, generate minimal tax revenue and probably represent a net loss to the municipality (that's us).
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This is assuming that Jason Thorne has some insight and experience far greater than the people of Toronto, New York, Hong Kong, Paris, London, and any other great city of the world who have decided to build up instead of out and have decided that public transit is the future of a well run city .... In Hamilton we thing that skyscrapers and density cause traffic ....but putting 100 000 people in the farms and making them drive into the city works perfectly fine for us ....as long as it doesn't block the escarpment or the lake