Edmonton Construction 13 (November 2015)

[rapid_business]

way too much going on there... needs to be simplified.

Also looks like they are staging with the intent of future purchase and development of the adjacent site.

[Coldrsx]

Way too much indeed... nearing Homer car.

[Coldrsx]

David Staples: Restrictive covenants might be killing a fly with a sledgehammer, but that's OK

DAVID STAPLES, EDMONTON JOURNAL

Many Edmontonians are so ticked off with the city’s new plan for lot-splitting and skinny homes that they’re talking about putting restrictive covenants on their own homes. The covenants will forever forbid their properties from being subdivided into two lots.

But are they killing a fly with a sledgehammer? That’s how it looks.

Two skinny homes are going up across the street from my own house. I also live on a 50-plus-foot lot that can now be subdivided. The first thought that came to mind when I heard about these covenants is that I wouldn’t want to just listen to any pro-covenant neighbour on the matter, I would want legal and business advice.

For one thing, neighbours might have some facts wrong. That’s certainly the case in a pro-covenant email sent out in Capilano, Gold Bar and Fulton Place. The document warns that the new rules will allow for “3 storey houses,” but that’s not accurate. In fact, any new skinny home that goes in must be the same height as has been allowed for decades. In mature neighbourhoods, the height limit was and will continue to be 8.6 metres, says Colton Kirsop, a senior city planner. That works out to at most two or maybe 2-1/2 storeys, allowing for a small attic room.

http://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics...g-a-fly-with-a-sledgehammer-but-thats-ok


'A moratorium should be put in place on lot-splitting until new rules are worked out, Noce says, with more emphasis on making sure any new development isn’t out-of-step with the character of the existing neighbourhood.'

um no.

[Daveography]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

Update

www.edmonton.ca

Actual source link please?

[Coldrsx]

The links always break from the council agenda, hence www.edmonton.ca.

Go to government, council, meetings, agendas.

[240glt]

The folks in Capilano/ Fulton/ Gold Bar are going nuts right now and they have lawyers involved and plan on making a big stink. There was one planning failure over on Capilano Drive That resulted in a massive ugly house that contravened almost all the zoning bylaws and the city didn't do anything about it, of course. So while I disagree with this M.O. (Our Gold Bar property is in a very desirable area, subdividable, and as houses on our street generally go for a half mil two high end homes on the same land could probably effectively double the value of the property) I ain't getting involved. Developers have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly and are now paying the price. P&D also failed miserably in their consult and rollout. I think council is going to have to intervene in some way to get this sorted out

We got the flyer in the mail last week. S.O. Asks me "are you getting involved in this ?" I said NOT A CHANCE! I had a hard enough time getting residents of Parkdale on board with infill development, I ain't going through THAT again!!!'

[hilman]

Would be great for the area if the CN Tower was changed to residential units, would also remove 280,000 square feet of office space from the market.

[Daveography]

I picked a great time to join my own CL board as Civics Director... can't wait until people here start picking up on this.

[Daveography]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

The links always break from the council agenda, hence www.edmonton.ca.

Go to government, council, meetings, agendas.

What date?

NVM, found it, June 13.

If you link to the actual agenda the link is permanent. It's the links to the supporting documents that are temporary. E.g., http://sirepub.edmonton.ca/sirepub/mtgviewer.aspx?meetid=1683&doctype=AGENDA

[SHOFEAR]

First:

"In the first 13 months since this bylaw passed, only 122 lots were split. That works out to 0.2 per cent."

Then:

“When you restrict the number of people who are looking at your property, it really hurts you.”

So what is it?


Progressives sure hate living in a world where their life's are effected by the ideology of others, but 🞵🞵🞵🞵....they just looooove imposing their ideology on everybody else, especially when it comes to city building.

If so many people are against lot splitting in their neighborhood.....maybe they have a point. And it should certainly be up to those people to decide the fate of the area that the live and have invested in....not a bunch of urbanista's living downtown who despise going south of 51st ave to determine what their neighborhood is going to look like.

We're incredibly blessed to live in an area where a typical family can afford a house with a decent sized yard, and it's unfortunate that so many people are obsessed with destroying that in favor of turning Edmonton into any other big city where families don't have that luxury.

Just because a small group of people associate livability with having a grocer, restaurant and coffee shop within walking distance and of course vibrancy, there are a massive number of people who don't value those things at all.

The city keeps pumping out these plans for large scale urban areas.....Century Park, East Jasper, Blatchford, Fort Road, rossdale, Strathearn, etc etc....but none have been a success, most have been massive disappointments and some have fallen completely off the radar. All this during a period of unprecedented population growth. Perhaps we go back to building cities that people want to live in, not following the latest academic planning theory of trying to squeeze people into every nook and cranny while telling them that its good for them because now they have a coffee shop down the street that they should consider as part of their living room.

[s211]

Originally Posted by noodlenoodle

Yeah, a commercial-to-residential conversion in a building infamous for the lack of care & attention it's received over the years sounds like a recipe for disaster.

CN is a steel structure, yes? Those don't typically work well for residential conversion due to poor soundproofing capacities.

[GreenSPACE]

Originally Posted by 240glt

The folks in Capilano/ Fulton/ Gold Bar are going nuts right now and they have lawyers involved and plan on making a big stink. There was one planning failure over on Capilano Drive That resulted in a massive ugly house that contravened almost all the zoning bylaws and the city didn't do anything about it, of course. So while I disagree with this M.O. (Our Gold Bar property is in a very desirable area, subdividable, and as houses on our street generally go for a half mil two high end homes on the same land could probably effectively double the value of the property) I ain't getting involved. Developers have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly and are now paying the price. P&D also failed miserably in their consult and rollout. I think council is going to have to intervene in some way to get this sorted out

We got the flyer in the mail last week. S.O. Asks me "are you getting involved in this ?" I said NOT A CHANCE! I had a hard enough time getting residents of Parkdale on board with infill development, I ain't going through THAT again!!!'

I think there's very little Council can do. They can't be shown to be favouring any single family neighbourhood over another. If property owners get something legal in place, that's up to them.

I think it's silly though, this fear of the unknown or disliking change. There's always worst case examples and it's being used as a way to try to discriminate.

[s211]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

Progressives sure hate living in a world where their life's are effected by the ideology of others, but 🞵🞵🞵🞵....they just looooove imposing their ideology on everybody else, especially when it comes to city building.

If so many people are against lot splitting in their neighborhood.....maybe they have a point. And it should certainly be up to those people to decide the fate of the area that the live and have invested in....not a bunch of urbanista's living downtown who despise going south of 51st ave to determine what their neighborhood is going to look like.

We're incredibly blessed to live in an area where a typical family can afford a house with a decent sized yard, and it's unfortunate that so many people are obsessed with destroying that in favor of turning Edmonton into any other big city where families don't have that luxury.

Just because a small group of people associate livability with having a grocer, restaurant and coffee shop within walking distance and of course vibrancy, there are a massive number of people who don't value those things at all.

The city keeps pumping out these plans for large scale urban areas.....Century Park, East Jasper, Blatchford, Fort Road, rossdale, Strathearn, etc etc....but none have been a success, most have been massive disappointments and some have fallen completely off the radar. All this during a period of unprecedented population growth. Perhaps we go back to building cities that people want to live in, not following the latest academic planning theory of trying to squeeze people into every nook and cranny while telling them that its good for them because now they have a coffee shop down the street that they should consider as part of their living room.

I wish you could have been in the audience for the NAIOP breakfast we had a few days ago here in Vancouver. Counter to the Vancouver gospel, a think-tank guy from Ottawa basically took a huge steaming dump on elite urbanists and then set them on fire. He didn't mince words, his thesis being that it is urbanist planning policy is to blame for most the housing crunch and rising prices (and not the boogieman "Asian" buyers [too little empirical data to support that thesis]).

[Daveography]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

Progressives sure hate living in a world where their life's are effected by the ideology of others, but 🞵🞵🞵🞵....they just looooove imposing their ideology on everybody else, especially when it comes to city building.

...isn't putting restrictive covenants on land basically imposing your ideology on all future owners of that land?

For a guy who's all "freedom freedom freedom" you don't seem too keen on letting people split and build on their own land.

[240glt]

Originally Posted by s211

I wish you could have been in the audience for the NAIOP breakfast we had a few days ago here in Vancouver. Counter to the Vancouver gospel, a think-tank guy from Ottawa basically took a huge steaming dump on elite urbanists and then set them on fire. He didn't mince words, his thesis being that it is urbanist planning policy is to blame for most the housing crunch and rising prices (and not the boogieman "Asian" buyers [too little empirical data to support that thesis]).

The biggest lie told by the urbanists is that lot splitting and densification is required to increase affordability. Most of the infill is the exact opposite of that. They want to make money, because a subset of the population is interested in buying a brand new (many times extremely ugly) home in an established neighborhood. To a lesser extent density is required in order to keep schools and stores open, but really what we probably should be looking at is schools that can be re-purposed or conglomerated when that first wave of kids moves out. Our Gold Bar neighborhood is in no danger of becoming less desirable, even with the school gone. The Parkdale neighborhood saw a decline long before the school closed, and now that it is closed the area is in resurgence. The dynamics between neighborhoods needs to be aggressed by the city, and contrary to what Greenspace thinks council has considerable sway over how that can happen, if they have the fortitude to do it


Several houses on our street (built in the mid 60's) have had extensive renovations, second stories added, even rooms above garages. none have subdivided their lots. Many, like me, love our big back yards and green space. Some don't and that's fine too, but lots like mine are not the boogeyman some of the urbanists would have you believe.

Really this all just shows how young we are as a city, how inept our council is and how amateurish the infill development industry is here

[240glt]

Originally Posted by Daveography

...isn't putting restrictive covenants on land basically imposing your ideology on all future owners of that land?

For a guy who's all "freedom freedom freedom" you don't seem too keen on letting people split and build on their own land.

No one is forcing a future buyer to buy the property either

My parents bought the lot next door from their East Hill home in Vernon to keep anyone from building on it. The area has significant historic value, and my folks value the character. Over the past two decades many people (mostly from Alberta) have come in and subdivided the big lots and put up houses that are huge and out of character. My dad (ex-lawyer) put a covenant on the side yard to preserve the nature of the street. It's his prerogative to basically wipe $250k worth of value off the property. He sees the character of the area more valuable than that

[Harrij]

It would be nice to strike a balance between urban fantasy 'hoods and the standard Edmonton suburb with SFHs, walkups or senior condos, and ugly strip malls. The average edmontonian's acceptance of these conditions probably has more to do with lack of exposure to a different system than actually finding the design of these neighbourhoods to be optimal.

I never enjoyed walking or driving through the Capilano shopping centre parking lot to do anything or long before I had any clue about urbanism.

[noodlenoodle]

Originally Posted by 240glt

Really this all just shows how young we are as a city, how inept our council is and how amateurish the infill development industry is here

Amen.

[rapid_business]

I won't fling mud at 'urbanists' or 'suburbanites' or 'hipsters' or 'conservatives'. It doesn't get us anywhere.

We are a young city. The fact that many inner suburbs are only seeing their first wave of generational and ownership changes points to that. It also points to the fact that this is the first wave of large transformation and redevelopment many of these neighbourhoods are facing.

I've let my stripes be shown on this matter before and honestly believe that the free market protects interests of homeowners much more than needing protectionist measures to do so.

Housing and ownership have close connections to peoples values, and that is OK. If the neighbour across the street wants to tear down his house and build skinny homes, or a duplex, or a garage suite, or decide to rent it out, that is fine. And if it's not OK with me, I can move to an areas where price point, location and maybe even homeowner association limits those choice to whatever realm I feel is acceptable. In the end, I can control what I do with my property. I can't control what you do. And that tension does bother some people, hence the use of zoning and bylaw restrictions. It's not perfect, but it's what we have currently and I am for opening it up future and letting that protection of the marketplace dictate more than artificial restrictions of bylaw. Again, my opinion isn't popular with everyone, but that is OK.

[240glt]

Originally Posted by Harrij

It would be nice to strike a balance between urban fantasy 'hoods and the standard Edmonton suburb with SFHs, walkups or senior condos, and ugly strip malls. The average edmontonian's acceptance of these conditions probably has more to do with lack of exposure to a different system than actually finding the design of these neighbourhoods to be optimal.

I never enjoyed walking or driving through the Capilano shopping centre parking lot to do anything or long before I had any clue about urbanism.

That's a bit apples & oranges is it not ? Capilano mall is bordered on all sides by 6 lane arterial roads, we're talking about small scale residential infill in mature neighbourhoods

I don't think anyone actually likes walking or driving in the mall parking lot. And I think your assumption that those who accept suburban design "lack exposure" is way off the mark. Where we live is by quite a wide margin the most suburban I have ever lived, in any of th cities I have lived (Van & Cal) but At this point in my life I love it, so that premise is patently false I'd say