09-03-2015, 12:54 AM
(09-02-2015, 09:22 PM)mpd618 Wrote:(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.
If they use the ground floor for smaller, low-cost units (where the lack of a view is not a major issue), the parking requirements are even less. 10 units of 50 m^2 (560 sqft) would require only two parking spaces.
Dowtown retail space only requires one space per 95 m^2, so six spaces in this particular case.