09-02-2015, 09:22 PM
(09-02-2015, 07:09 PM)mpd618 Wrote: I don't understand 1) why they think ground-floor street-facing units in a location like this are attractive, and 2) why they aren't just doing commercial.
As always, I suspect parking requirements in the zoning might have something to do with poor choices like this one.
Let me make this more concrete. As an extremely rough guess, there's 7 or so 800-square foot residential units on the ground floor. That's a total of 5600 square feet, or just over 500 square metres. As residential units in a multi-residential building in a Mixed-Use zone, they require 1 parking spot per unit for a total of 7. For retail use, Kitchener requires 1 parking space per 20 square metres, or a total of 25 spots if that space were retail instead. (That doesn't include restaurant use, which is at 1 per 7.5 square metres.)
It's possible that another 18 spots would have required them to scale back the building or add another level of parking.