Posted Dec 28, 2023, 4:04 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2015
Posts: 14,691
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The worst TOA probably has to be the Phibbs Exchange zoning when you look at the amount of highway and land that has already been rebuilt or is commercial/light industrial.
Quote:
President of Darwin Properties Jason Turcotte says the various pieces of legislation the Province has announced were "bold," but that the transit-oriented development legislation was the biggest miss.
"With not requiring municipalities to pre-zone, in my mind, all you've done now is guide some future planning work. By not mandating the pre-zone, you're basically going to be left with a situation where the municipalities that were already doing a good job of densifying around transit will continue to do so and those that aren't now have no greater impetus to do it better than before."
Under the legislation, Turcotte points out, municipal governments cannot reject development proposals in transit-oriented development areas on the basis of height or density, but they can still reject them on any other basis. Because the Province's legislation does not change the rezoning, there is still a lot of room for municipal governments to get around it and reject transit-oriented projects, if they want to.
"By not mandating what the density is, by way of a pre-zone, what you're saying now is 'Okay, municipalities, you have to allow someone to rezone a site next to transit for, let's say, 12 storeys and 4.0 FSR, but you can put any other obligation or condition that you want on that rezoning. It could mean that you provide 4.0 FSR of housing and half of it has to be non-market. Well, that's a non-viable development. [City's can say] that if you're not prepared to do that, then they have no obligation to approve it, or they could find some other reason. There's just no obligation. It's a really bold move on the surface, but it's actually toothless in changing the behaviour of municipalities that were not already doing a good job of it."
Ian Brackett, Senior Broker at Goodman Commercial, adds that the legislation also does not prescribe uses and tenures, such as whether housing has to be strata or rental, nor does it outline the definitions of affordability and below-market housing.
"That being said, other legislation introduced requires municipalities to more regularly update community plans and to pre-zone properties to conform with those community plans, so over time, the TOD framework will likely be reflected in actual changes to zoning laws," said Brackett.
Michael Geller, an adjunct professor at SFU and real estate consultant, has concerns that are more on the practical level. He's currently working on a project, as a consultant, that's planned for 27th Avenue and Cambie, and has been going back and forth with City staff over some fine details about the project. The staff have been "difficult," he says.
"Then along comes this provincial document that says this particular location warrants a building that's eight storeys, not six storeys, and a floor space ratio of up to 4.0, rather than 2.5," Geller says. "So here's a real practical dilemma for my clients. Do we continue as we have been and try to resolve the minor details of the building, or do we put down our tools, wait a year, and hope that we can get a significantly higher density? Now, that's an isolated situation, but it's going to be happening all over the province."
Geller says he thinks the team that put together the legislation did a good job of identifying the opportunities, and he commends their work, but he suspects that they did not sit down with municipal planners to figure out whether the physical services of those transit-oriented development areas can really support the higher level of development, not to mention other related aspects such as school capacity and community centres.
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https://storeys.com/bc-transit-orien...opment-policy/
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