Sunlife Towers | 2x 24 fl | Proposed

[ijmorlan]

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That's entirely up to the builder. The builder could retain ownership and lease the commercial space, they could sell the commercial space to a holding company that would then lease the space and or they can sell the space directly to the end business user(s), like they sell condos. No matter who ends up owning the space pays condo fees just like all residents do. 

In a rental scenario they can hand the commercial component over to a management company that then owns much of the liability. Alternatively they could register the building as a condo, title all the residential to themselves and sell the commercial as above. There are legal implications here but they are not onerous (BarrelYards being a prominent local example of such a setup).

Basically, if the builder does not want liability for the commercial space (though other than seeing more foot traffic, the commercial space is not governed by different statutes than a residential space so there is little reason that should be a worry), they can sell it to whomever they want. 

That should not be an excuse for lack of commercial here. 

The city should be more concerned with animating the street along the LRT corridor than it should be with parking or setbacks but alas, small town thinking persists on our council.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.  I am curious, how do those scenarios work in terms of votes for the condo board.  I wouldn't think a "corporation" could get a vote.  I guess in general, how do votes work in terms of different sizes of units anyway?

As for liability, I kind of assumed that business insurance would be greater than residential insurance, but I really have no idea, having never owned a business.

The city does need to be concerned with animating the street, but there are also pretty high parking requirements.  If I was looking for a condo, I wouldn't want to be paying for a parking space.  But I'm pretty sure I'd have little choice in the matter.

In a condominium in Ontario, each unit gets a single vote. Each unit also has responsibility for a specific fractional share of the common expenses, as specified in the declaration of that specific condominium.

Note however that may be possible to knock together multiple units, and as far as I can tell the owner would still be considered to own each of the individual units and would therefore have the appropriate number of votes. In the future they presumably could un-combine the units and sell them off individually.

As to the commercial issue, I definitely agree that commercial would be desireable, but I would rather we stop forbidding stuff before we start requiring more stuff. For example, parking minima absolutely should be abolished, setbacks should be a matter between the property owner and adjacent properties, and there should be no commercial-only zones: it should always be legal to occupy a commercial storefront residentially, or to construct apartments or offices above commercial.

I might be convinced that zoning should require the ground floor units to have a floor height that matches the street and that they should in some sense “face” the street and maybe even that they be constructed to a standard that would allow commercial use. But actually requiring that they be used for commercial purposes is nonsense (although in practice the result would almost certainly be commercial use).