City
Morning Brew: February 27th, 2009
Photo: "Street Preaching" by HighPlainsDrifter Photography, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
A confidential document by the province's transportation agency Metrolinx reveals some potentially shady practice. The Globe and Mail reports that a Metrolinx draft of their communications strategy suggests that supporters be "salted" at public consultations in order to avoid be mired in "an orgy of consultation" when "nimbies and local politicians on the make" get involved. This comes after the agency had already been accused of lacking transparency.
PM Harper spoke publicly about introducing new anti-gang legislation that focuses on making stiffer penalties for offenders, and also took the opportunity to speak for everyone who may be opposed to his proposals: "We know that we're going to hear these critics, and we know that we're going to hear the opposition parrot some of these critics because they all believe in soft-on-crime policies."
29 units are still available (starting at $1.4 million) in the snazzy Ritz Carlton development project in Toronto. Developers are confident that the building will sell through despite the economic dive. An interesting but not completely surprising revelation: only 20% of the buyers so far are Torontonians.
--
Are retailers' fears that removing parking spots in favour of bike lanes will cause them loss founded in reality? A recent study in the Annex suggests otherwise. In my opinion, as long as we continue to hastily weigh economic earnings against environmental benefits, not much will get done.
Retail giant Walmart will be closing all 8 of its member-based Ontario Sam's Club stores in just a few weeks, but says it also has plans to open 26 new supercentre Walmart stores. Will competitor Costco buy up the locations? Will the staff be transferred to the new Walmarts? Some details have yet to be revealed.
And arts and crafts and fashion lovers might want to check out a pretty cool initiative that aims to highlight local designers and retailers, and get people to come back to their abandoned craft projects. Details are at Toronto Craft Alert.
Discussion
29 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
"An interesting but not completely surprising revelation: only 20% of the buyers so far are Torontonians."
Yikes. Nothing says "run away" quite like a development that has attracted speculators from around the globe.
=/
I think that they clearly have their projects confused, the Ritz is not the Kazakhstani's from Bazis International Group at Yonge-Bloor where Roy Square was demolished to make way for their development.
Frankly it feels like we're steps away from "You must support the Conser- I mean government or you're un-patriotic".
Maybe "positive-density-on-a-former-brownfield-site-in-a-financial-district-next-to-the-subway"? Anyone?
Sums up the Tocondo philosophy nicely.
Building so called condos (with in reality are vastly overpriced apartments, imho one of the best scams of the past 20 years), leaving many out because of the cost is a long term solution?
10-20 years from now, many of these hastily built condos won't be in fine shape.
Give your head a shake
Don't kid yourself just becasue it's written into the article, international buyers are buying into many developments not just this one. THe percentage is higher because its a inetrantional company.
In these times we want money now were gonna pick and choose who buys and where? should we be approving based on the country they come from? where did your international grandparents move from?
RE. CRIMINALS; FORCED LABOUR IN THE YUKON.
"so called condos (with in reality are vastly overpriced apartments"
Frankly, condos are just apartments that are owned and not rented. It's the same fucking thing.
"10-20 years from now, many of these hastily built condos won't be in fine shape."
And which high-rises won't have maintenance problems 10-20 years from now? Seriously, I'd like to know.
All it did was put a bunch of innocent people in jail as they were guilty by association.
Manitoba 10 years later is still the gang capital and murder capital of Canada. It didn't even dent the gang populace.
Thank you for the invitation to give my head a shake.
New money is a good thing, yes. International is good, yes. But you should try to recall that we've been told all along that Toronto's condo boom is genuine this time, not like the 1980s speculative boom. We are told that today's buyers are nice Toronto working people who need homes, NOT speculators.
My point, if you have the analytical yarbles to grasp it, was that a project overwhelmingly sold to foreign buyers, is most likely overwhelmingly being sold to speculators, contrary what we've been told by the CREA all along. These buyers are NOT into Toronto for the long haul -- they will liquidate at the first sign of trouble.
Can you dig it now?
But hey, who am I to stop you from the defending the poor parking lot that got booted out of a home.
This whole anti-development/anti-commerce/etc crap makes me sick.
Roof over head? YES
Clothes on Back? YES
Food on Table? YES
Personally, I have nothing against the idea of a parking lot being turned into high-density living space, IF the demand is there and people actually use the building to, you know, live in it. But the idea of foreign investors using our real estate to play their financial games is a little disconcerting, especially considering the whole global financial mess we're in right now started when some greedy investors in the US decided that the price of real estate could only go up indefinitely, not realizing that every bubble's got to burst sometime. And when the Toronto condo bubble bursts - watch out, it's gonna be ugly.