General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[Marko]

The thing is, if developers wanted this, Ford would do it. But developers don't want it.

The thing that allowing smaller scale developments does is lowers the barrier of entry to being a developer. If I have to be able to raise 100MM to build a 20 storey tower, there's only a few competitors, if I only have to raise 5MM to build a small scale 3 storey building, pretty much any homeowner (with no mortgage) in the city could do that.

So, developers (the ones that are developing buildings today) don't want this...because it would cause them more competition.

Or at least that's my speculation, given that Ford would pretty much do anything developers ask for.

Oh, and yes, I am absolutely saying that zoning restrictions are contributing to the concentration of wealth and the monopolization of the development market. That's what legislation usually does...it's why Conservatives pretend to oppose it, but in practice tend to support it.

Yes, I think you’ve identified a significant issue with the modern development market. I have the impression that property owners used to develop their own properties; a person who owned a house on a street that was becoming busier might renovate the front of their property to put in a storefront, for example. But now almost any change requires zoning approval, and to get through that you pretty much need to be a professional developer.

I am reminded of a for-sale sign I saw once on a vacant lot advertising it as a site for a strip mall (or something; the specific use doesn’t really matter). I remember wondering to myself how they knew it should be a strip mall, and of course the answer is zoning: a new owner could either build what the current zoning said, probably in part a result of changes requested by the curren towner, or they could go through a lengthy and expensive process to change it.

They've made this very difficult for non-professional developers, particularly in Waterloo Region due to the complexity of the multiple levels of government. I'm an individual home owner, and in 2020 Ontario changed the home-based food businesses law to allow many bakery items, like bread, to be made and sold from home kitchens. I had hoped to be able to start a weekend bakery with this law. Despite living directly outside the Kitchener Market, Kitchener told me I can't do this – my house is zoned to allow a business, but it must be a law firm or other office, but not a home bakery (even without retail) and I would need to appeal the zoning or wait for the zoning changes to happen and hope this gets covered. Public Health told me they haven't made any changes based on the new Provincial law, and the Regional requirements have a higher standard – they require a complete separate kitchen from the living space – meaning, the only change the Province's new law impacted was you don't need a separate hand washing sink in your commercial kitchen in your home, which is hilarious in context of the Provincial law.

This goes from "fairly straightforward way to start a business with limited capital investment" to "months of delays for zoning changes that might not get approved, which will cost $5,000-10,000, plus the costs and delays of a full renovation to put a commercial kitchen in the basement." So I'm not doing it.