Last week Sidewalk Toronto held a roundtable discussion here in the city and released some preliminary design ideas and strategies for Quayside. (That’s why Dan Doctoroff was talking on BNN Bloomberg.) 

I went through the full presentation this morning and below are a bunch of slides that I thought you all might find interesting.

Here is the extent of “Quayside” along the waterfront. The current land use permissions allow for about 3 million square feet of space and towers as tall as 50 storeys.

Here is a paving system being explored for the area. It is modular. It may melt snow. And perhaps most interestingly, it would allow for dynamic changes in road use throughout the day. This sort of thing already happens to a lesser degree on streets like Jarvis. This technology could take that much further.

One of their primary goals is to double Toronto’s usable outdoor hours. To do that, they are proposing simple weather shields (pictured below) and weather-responsive systems.

They are spending a lot of time thinking about the ground floor of buildings, which they are calling Stoa. The idea is to create flexible and porous spaces that respond quickly to changing needs and that integrate more seamlessly with the surrounding public realm.

There’s a lot on the potential hierarchy of the street network and how each will function for transit, conventional cars, AVs, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on. I was happy to see “laneways” as a core part of the pedestrian network. They are designed for walking speeds. Access would be restricted for things that move too quickly.

This image ties in the street grid and Stoa.

Finally, the goal is to build the neighborhood entirely out of timber, and more specifically, Canadian timber. If they follow through on this, I think it would really push adoption of this material forward in the city.

I would encourage you to check out the full package, which you can do here. I can’t wait for these projects to get underway along Toronto’s waterfront.

Last month, Curated Properties submitted a rezoning and site plan application for a 6-storey, 25-unit building at 45 Dovercourt Road in Toronto. The project is known to the market as Cabin and you can register for it now.

The project immediately caught my attention (because of its design, because of its branding, and because I like the work of Curated), so I decided to dig in further and get a copy of their architectural drawings. Development applications and their supporting documents are all public. Anyone can request a copy. But the city isn’t great at making this known.

Since I’m excited to see more of these small scale urban infill projects in the city, today I thought I would highlight some of its key features and some of the things that are being proposed in order to make a project like this work.

The Homes

First of all, 100% of the suites are 2-storey. 76% of the suites are also 2 bedroom or larger.

The result is that the project is essentially a series of townhomes stacked on top of each other. I suspect that this will appeal to more end-users as opposed to investors. Hopefully, it will also attract more families to the area.

Here’s the third floor plan:

You probably can’t see it, but all of the suites are marked as “Level 1”, obviously indicating that there’s more than one level.

Also worth mentioning is the notch or cut out on the north side of the building. This is what makes the 2 suites in the middle of the floor plate possible. In order for them to have windows, they need to be setback from the (north) property line. It also means those suites get terraces.

The Parking

Turning to the ground floor plan, it’s interesting to see that they are proposing 8 triple car stackers that will be accessible off the rear laneway (right side on the plan below). That equates to 24 parking spaces in the building (8 bays x 3 cars per stacker).

On small urban sites like this one, it can be very difficult to accommodate parking. So it’s inevitable that we will see more parking stackers in the city and a continual reduction in parking minimums.

The Construction

Finally, I have been told that this project is expected to be framed in wood, as opposed to reinforced concrete, which is more typical of condominiums in Toronto.

As of the beginning of this year (2015), the Ontario Building Code was modified to allow wood-frame buildings up to 6 storeys. Before this change, the highest you could go was 4 storeys.

This change was done with the intent of reducing construction costs so that it becomes more feasible to develop smaller infill sites such as this one. So expect to see more of this.

I know that a lot of people would like to remain in the city even when they start having children. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find affordable low-rise homes. And not everyone wants to live in a high-rise tower. 

That’s why I think we will see more, not less, low-rise and mid-rise infill projects like Cabin. If you’re interested in this topic, also check out a post I wrote called 3 stages of intensification.

The rendering at the top of this post is from Curated Properties and the drawings are by RAW Design.

Yesterday it was announced that, starting January 1, 2015, the Ontario Building Code would be changed to allow wood frame buildings up to six storeys. Previous to this, the highest you could go was 4 storeys. 

This change has been in the works for a number of years. And it’s already allowed in most of Europe and in other places in Canada, such as British Columbia. So it’s nice to see this finally happen here in Toronto.

The reason this is a big deal, and worthy of a blog post, is that it changes the cost structure for mid-rise buildings. Simply put, wood frame buildings are cheaper to construct compared to reinforced concrete and other buildings materials.

Some people think this just means developers will make greater returns. But I don’t think that’s the case (see microeconomics). The real opportunity here is to spur mid-rise development on sites that – before this change – would have been previously un-developable. That is, you just couldn’t make the numbers work.

As much as mid-rise buildings make a lot of sense from an urban design standpoint, it’s not always easy to find good mid-rise development sites. Mid-rise buildings are generally less efficient to build compared to towers and you have a lot of fixed costs that don’t scale down just because you’re doing a smaller project.

So what this change in cost structure will, hopefully, do is allow more product to enter the market. And since many big urban centers operate with perpetual supply deficits – precisely because it’s often so hard to build – this should actually help with affordability.