Strata | 16 & 22 fl | Proposed

[Viewfromthe42]

One point those commenters might have is that recent developments do not offer residences of diverse forms, for instance- a lot of them do seem to cater specifically to young singles and childless couples.

One issue I have with this statement is that this is largely their fault. There's only so much capital you can spend when asking for concessions from developers for buildings. Instead of asking for affordable or assisted housing, or two or three bedroom units, residents largely push for more parking. A great example is Circa. The original proposal had 194 residences and 304 bedrooms, so at least 110 beyond-first bedrooms, opening up more units to empty-nesters (how do couples downsize from massive homes if we only have one bedrooms on offer?) and small families. In the end, they wound up (based on renderings, can site plan confirm?) filling the heritage building they were so concerned with preserving with parking instead, trimmed one floor from the building, 6 residences, and ninety bedrooms. The biggest change residents were able to effect was to drastically reduce the family density. The developer still gets to sell 97% of their originally proposed kitchens and bathrooms, the highest-margin parts of a development, while the local residents were able to remove a potential 90 two-bedroom units from coming into UpTown, as many potential homes for couples and families as Erb to Alexandra, Roslin to Avondale.