Tag: mackay laneway house

• Mackay Laneway House is now under construction

  https://twitter.com/globizen/status/1291563335717203968?s=20

  Well, it only took 11 years.

  I still remember the first time I walked into Etobicoke Civic Centre and showed the lady at the counter my design for a laneway house. She didn’t know what a laneway house was and she couldn’t figure out where it fronted. “Wait, it’s behind the main house? It has no frontage. Where’s the street? Huh?” A lot has changed over the past decade, as I knew it would. All of the building permits are now in and Mackay Laneway House is under construction in Toronto’s Corso Italia neighborhood.

  Kilbarry Hill is overseeing the construction process. (Construction was supposed to start earlier this summer, but COVID-19 had something to say about that.) Regular updates will be posted on the Globizen blog and on the socials, with the goal of creating a kind of “how-to guide” for laneway suites. Expect detailed construction updates, a list of the individual trades that are being used, post-completion costing information, and probably a bunch more.

  The first order of business is the site servicing work, all of which has to be done via the existing house. No connections off the mains because, remember, these are intended to be secondary suites, similar to basement apartments. This raises the question of how best to submeter the utilities. Thankfully, the good folks over at Lanescape were kind enough to share how they have done it.

  Click here to subscribe to the Globizen Bulletin.

  2020.08.09

• Bowling Lane House, Calgary

  

  I just finished going through the work of Studio North. My friend Peter introduced me to them through this Globe article. 

  They are a Calgary-based design-build practice that have completed a number of laneway houses, as well as bigger projects such as this 34 unit townhouse project in Canmore, Alberta.

  What (not surprisingly) caught my attention was their focus on laneway/accessory dwellings. Pictured above is their Bowling Lane House in Crescent Heights, Calgary. 

  It’s a 700 sf one-bedroom house that sits behind a 1920′s heritage house. Here is an axonometric of that relationship (the existing house was made transparent):

  

  Here is an elevation from the main street. Look at how neatly it tucks behind the existing house. All you really notice is the garage of Bowling Lane House.

  

  Here is how Bowling Lane House fits into its laneway.

  

  And here are two images of the double height space that they managed to create within this 700 sf house.

  

  Notwithstanding that this is a wider lot than what you might typically find in Toronto, it is precisely the kind of housing – both in terms of design quality and scale – that I was trying to create with Mackay Laneway House. It’s also where I was planning to move.

  Kudos to the Studio North team for driving this initiative in Calgary. You can check out the rest of their projects here. They have a number of other laneway houses within their portfolio. And all of them are beautiful.

  All images from Studio North.

  2017.11.04

• Laneway house support map

  I posted the following image to Twitter this morning:

  

  It’s a map of some of the people who support my proposed laneway house (in midtown Toronto) and have signed their name at lanewaylove.com.

  To me, this is an incredible demonstration of the kind of broad-based support that exists in this city today for laneway housing/suites.

  I met with some of my neighbors last week to discuss the proposal and one of them said to me: “I can tell that you’re genuinely passionate about this idea.” 

  My response: “You’re absolutely right. I am. This is not just about my singular project or the money. This is about something much bigger for the city.”

  Clearly, many others see that as well. 

  I know that there’s been a lot of laneway talk on the blog over the past few weeks and months. It’s been on my mind as I prepare for my project’s hearing next month.

  For those of you who have no interest in laneway housing/accessory dwelling units, rest assured that the laneway content should subside (a little) after the summer.

  2017.07.29

• Architecture pour tous!

  In 2015, Studiolada Architectes (of Nancy, France) completed a 117 square meter home for a retired couple. On the firm’s website they call the project: Réalisation d’une maison individuelle à Baccarat. 

  Here are two photos (1 exterior and 1 interior) via the architects:

  

  Most of the house is finished in wood. It was a modest build costing 174,361 € in total before taxes. The house itself cost 146,506 € and the standalone garage cost 20,245 € (both before taxes). The balance of the costs seem to have gone to exterior landscaping.

  If you consider only the house, that works out to be about 1,252 € per square meter or about 115 € per square foot. Speaking of reasonable.

  What’s particularly interesting about this project though is that after it was completed the architects published what they call a dossier de synthèse en Open Source (click through to download) – effectively an open source file of all the project’s documents.

  Included are all of the plans, assembly details, construction photos, and even the entire construction budget. The ambition was to build an affordable and sustainable house and then make all of the information publicly available so that others might replicate what was done.

  I think this is great.

  So I’ve decided to publicly commit to doing the same for my proposed laneway house. If and when it gets built, I will document and publish the entire journey – including all development/construction costs – and make it freely available on this blog and probably elsewhere.

  I got a bit of flak (on the internet) for calling my laneway house a “prototype” project. But that’s truly what I want it to be for Toronto. Hopefully sharing more, rather than less, information will help it to serve that purpose.

  2017.07.25

• Laneway housing — right now feels different

  

  The CBC published a piece this morning on my laneway house proposal. The subheadline: Real estate developer believes time is right to build a laneway house he planned five years ago. 

  It’s true. As many of you already know, this proposal has been in the works for a number of years. But right now feels different. I continue to be encouraged by all of the interest and support surrounding laneway housing in this city. 

  Thank you Michelle Cheung for covering this.

  2017.07.03

• Laneway house zoning variances

  We received the list of required zoning variances for Mackay Laneway House last week and they have been posted to the Globizen blog. 

  As is said in the post, we have requested clarification on a few items and we will be resubmitting the drawings to address some of the notices. 

  But I still think it’s great to get this information out in the public. It’s the sort of thing that usually doesn’t get published and I know there’s a lot of interest in laneway housing in the city right now. If you haven’t already, please consider signing your name at lanewaylove.com.

  It is, however, a fairly esoteric post. So if this is not your bag, ignore this post and check back tomorrow. Regular scheduled programming will resume then.

  2017.05.17

• How Vancouver assesses laneway house eligibility

  

  Vancouver has supported laneway houses since 2009. So today I thought I would take a look at what their policy considers to be an “eligible lot.” All of the information for this post was taken from this laneway housing how-to guide dated November 2016.

  Here are some of the main ways in which they assess eligibility:

  • Laneway houses are allowed on all lots in the following zones: RS single family zones, RT-11/11N, RM-
    7/7N, RM-8/8N, RM-9/9N and RM-9A/9AN.
  • LWHs are permitted in addition to a secondary suite within the main house.
  • LWHs can be for family use or for rental.
  • LWHs are permitted on lots with a minimum width of 9.8m (32.15′). But provided they are designed appropriately, planning may also allow LWHs on lots as narrow as 7.3m (23′).
  • The LWH site must have access to an open lane.
  • A fire access path must be provided from the street along one of the sideyards to the entrance of the LWH. This path needs to have a clear width of 900mm.
  • The lot must be deep enough to allow for a both a LWH and a backyard open space.
  • The LWH and the main house must have a minimum separation distance of 4.9m (16′).

  If you’re a regular reader of this blog and wondering how Mackay Laneway House stacks up against the above criteria, here are the test results:

  • The lot is in a Residential R Zone, which permits a variety of different building types ranging from detached houses to fourplexes and apartment buildings.
  • The lot width is 7.62m, which exceeds the lower minimum dimension.
  • There is a lane.
  • The access path on the sideyard is 2.38m, but with a bay window projecting into it. So net, it’s closer to 2m, which still greatly exceeds the minimum clear width above.
  • The design includes for a generous backyard between the main house and the proposed LWH. 
  • The separation distance between the first floor of the main house and the proposed LWH is 7.5m (24′-7″). The main house steps back on the second floor, and so this distance would then increase. But in all cases, the minimum dimension is easily exceeded.

  If you’d like to learn more about laneway housing in Vancouver, click here.

  2017.05.03

• Introducing lanewaylove.com — my laneway house is back!

  One of the most widely read posts on this blog is this one here, called: Why it’s next to impossible to get a laneway house built in Toronto. Clearly, there’s a tremendous amount of interest in this housing type both here in the city and elsewhere.

  Since I wrote that past over 2 years ago, I have been bombarded with emails from people asking me the status of the project and if I could help them achieve something similar on their properties. And my response was always the same: sorry, the project is on hold.

  But over the last few years, things have changed. Home prices have risen dramatically in this city. At the beginning of 2017, the average price of a detached house reached almost $1.6 million – representing a year-over-year increase of nearly 30%!

  In part because of this, laneway housing has also entered mainstream consciousness thanks to groups and initiatives such as The Laneway Project, Lanescape, Evergreen, the University of Toronto, and so on. There are now Councillors advocating for them within City Hall, which was not the case even a few years ago.

  Given all of these changes, I decided that it was time to dust off my laneway house design and make a serious go at it. So I called up my architect friend Gabriel Fain and asked him if he would help me pioneer this new housing typology. He immediately said yes.

  Last week a revised version of Mackay Laneway House was submitted to the city, kick-starting the approvals process. Here’s a rendering showing the north elevation (view from existing house):

  

  The next step will be a trip to the Committee of Adjustment to obtain the necessary variances. But even with all of the momentum building in the city right now around more affordable housing solutions, this will not be a slam dunk. 

  So in parallel to all of this, we have also launched a new website called lanewaylove.com. Here you will find general information about laneway housing, as well as floor plans of the proposal. But most importantly, we hope it will serve as a tool to generate support for this and other laneway houses in Toronto.

  At the bottom of the site is a link that will allow you to support Mackay Laneway House by submitting your name, email, and postal code. The reason it also asks for your postal code is so that we can anonymously match supporters with specific areas of the city. We think this will be valuable information going forward.

  If you believe that Toronto would be well-served by more affordable and sustainable housing solutions, I would encourage you to sign your name at lanewaylove.com and share this post with your network. We would greatly appreciate your support.

  Here we go!

  2017.05.01