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Old Posted Sep 25, 2013, 10:38 PM
counterfactual counterfactual is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
Wouldn't it work the other way? That the intense real-estate value in downtown Toronto would make it unfeasible to preserve small buildings (this developer doesn't have an adjacent tower or anything--it's just this building). You can get higher-end clients, and there's a greater density of customers for a business, but the real-estate values are far, far higher as well. (The thing at the bottom of the Dineen building is just a coffee shop...lotsa business people, given the location, but I still don't imagine a coffee shop is paying for the building).

You see this in other cities too, that was just one example. Heck, look at Barrington Espace, or the NFB project, or the Lynch building on this site. I think with a project of Commerce Square's size, the other buildings could be more fully integrated at a reasonable cost. (Granted, I'm not an expert on these matters. But judging from what I've seen locally and elsewhere...)
Yeah, I think the higher property values led to more "efficient" uses of land; as in, bigger developments. But I just think that the choice of foregoing a big development in Toronto to restore and preserve a smaller heritage building is *still* not only affordable, but you can make plenty money on it, as you can get high end clients and get, you know, $50/square foot.

The owners not choosing to build up, are probably smaller beans and don't have the capital you would need for a major development. So they stay small, but they're still able to make plenty of money in Toronto. You can't really do that in Halifax right now, outside of a few exceptions. That's why the core and so many of our neighborhoods have suffered for so long. There just isn't the density to support so many kinds of local business or even banking (ie Gottingen North End).

I think for Halifax, we can have a few E-spaces and NFB developments around the core, but we also need some bigger works to bring more prestige to downtown work, to bring biz back to the core for both living and working, and so also significantly increasing residential density. NFB and E-Space are *not* going to fix the blasted ruin that is Barrington street. They need to be complemented by projects that offer more intense density infill.
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