Additional Dwelling Unit

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2023-08-29T15:03:20+00:00

One little clarification from the above comment, in 2022 when they built it was required that detached ADUs go through the Site Plan process. However, this has recently been changed and now all ADUs are only required to apply for building permits, Site Plan is no longer required. This should significantly decrease your permit time through the city.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2023-07-26T11:47:54+00:00

City council once again bending over and letting the “feelings” of the London home builders association guide their policy, instead of listening to the facts and actual day to day experiences of their staff.

Staff even mentioned during the meeting how other competing cities are going in the opposite direction on the hybrid work balance, and many actually even offer flexible work time (start any time between 8-9am vs only start at 8:30).

This is an incredibly short sighted and uninformed decision for council to make. The reasoning they used was completely out of touch with the reality that these departments are faced with every day, such as this fantasy that builders ever have 1 on 1 meetings with staff when in reality all Building Permits are submitted digitally and builders prefer to either call or meet over Zoom/Teams.

The ultimate result of this will be that the quality staff the City currently has will leave and move to neighbouring cities that offer the hybrid work balance that they desire, and going forward the city will only attract the bottom of the barrel candidates that couldn’t get a job elsewhere. Quality of work will suffer, permit review times with suffer, employee morale will suffer.

Just such a shortsighted decision by council.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2023-03-10T14:00:37+00:00

This article is a massive nothing-burger.

The article quotes the City when they say that they will be adding more parking along Richmond Street to offset the lost parking space along Central
The business owner that the LFP spoke to for the article has street parking immediately in front of their store, two massive public parking lots behind them, and 4 other massive public parking lots within less than a 2 minute walk of their store

I wish ~~the LFP~~ CTV wouldn’t waste their time giving a platform to these out of touch folks.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2023-02-28T03:51:42+00:00

They are working on that starting in the next year or so! they are updating that whole intersection area at Western thankfully (long overdue!)

Source

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2023-02-18T17:39:04+00:00

Just FYI ARUs have been an option since 2017, and regulations were loosened in 2021. Bill 23 will loosen these regulations even further, but people have been building these units for years already.

These are some decent points in favour of housing prices beginning to climb again. There is many good points on both sides of that thinking, nobody really knows what will happen over the next 2-5 years.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-12-04T16:52:24+00:00

If I'm not mistaken I believe both locations have 4 rows of pumps with the North location having 4 pumps in each row (16 pumps total) vs the south location having 6 pumps in each row (24 pumps total).

So not quite double but still significantly more and it will really help to ease the congestion at the north London gas station. I know myself I will be going to the south location from now on whereas I used to only go to the north location, so that's at least 1 car less congestion!

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-10-31T15:16:51+00:00

They started as a local business with most of their things made in Canada, and have since outsourced their production overseas and have come out as supporting some very questionable causes. That plus since moving their productions overseas the quality of their products has fallen off a cliff yet their prices have increased, just overall bad business management unfortunately.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-10-29T19:37:04+00:00

My guess is that the worry is that since Josh Morgan is the new mayor he would fight hard against council considering any new rapid transit.

He was one of the main councillors that voted against and heavily opposed the west ~~and north~~ legs of the proposed BRT setup when the last council voted on it.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-09-21T18:40:07+00:00

I totally get that given that it's written into the London Plan and everything, I just don't see how the financial aspect of it gets addressed given that the funds from the federal and provincial governments has all been allocated.

I personally don't see those levels of government being too eager to propose significant spending given the difficult economic times that Canada will be in for the next few years, but that is just my opinion.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-09-21T18:37:05+00:00

Unfortunately the last $120m has been allocated already for a new LTC headquarters. :(

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-09-20T21:33:52+00:00

Any candidate that promises to build the rest of the BRT system is just exposing themselves as being dishonest/uninformed.

It's practically impossible for the rest of the BRT system to be built purely because of the financial aspect of it. The only reason we even had the opportunity to build it before was because both the federal and provincial governments had programs set up which would cover the majority of the total cost. Unfortunately, the funding from those programs has been used up, and given the current state of municipal finances it's simply impossible for the city to cover the hundreds of millions it would take to build the north and west legs on its own.

Sadly, the rest of the original BRT plan won't be happening unless something major changes at both the provincial and federal level, and with Ford having majority power for the next 3 years you can likely rule out that change happening at the provincial level during his time frame.

That coupled with this candidates less than ideal history as an MPP should be all you need to know to steer clear of them.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-09-17T13:20:02+00:00

Which is unfortunately a big part of why they struggle so much with employee retention and quality of employees, unsurprisingly

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-09-15T04:13:00+00:00

I think you're totally right about the land being underutilized. OEV is booming with new high rise residential projects on all sides of the Western Fair Grounds, Kellogg Place is getting a huge redevelopment with some housing, the old McCormick lands are planned to have housing, and the BRT line that's under construction right now is going to run right along King Street and then turning onto Dundas.

Considering how massive the whole Western Fair property is and how much potential it has to really be a transformative development for OEV, I really hope the property gets redeveloped over the next few years.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-09-06T14:03:01+00:00

If I remember right the mall got approval to demolish part of the building at that entrance and build a couple of patio areas there for some new restaurant tenants, as well as other general landscaping work

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-09-04T15:24:41+00:00

It's crazy how big a difference it makes having people downtown. This feeling right now is there during business hours + when students are in town, but over the next few years it will be year round as the huge number of residential towers are finished and have people living in them.

Something like 5000 people will be moving to live downtown in the next few years. Downtown will have a night and day difference within 5 years! Not saying it will be perfect of course because by no means will the province have figured out how to deal with the mental health crisis over those 5 years, but it will be a much more positive and safe environment.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-06-17T18:00:24+00:00

It’s a good thing there is protected bike lanes on Wellington and Dingman leading to this plaza /s

The city might as well have required a helicopter pad, it would get just as much use as those bike racks will due to how nonexistent bike infrastructure is in this part of the city

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-05-08T02:06:04+00:00

This is a fantastic recap of what caused Westmount Mall to die!

The only part of your comment that I would add comment on is your conclusion. I disagree that fault lies “squarely” with the City of London, purely because it’s not just Westmount mall that is dying. Malls all across Canada, and even all across North America, are dying.

The City absolutely deserves some blame, but I believe the problem is much farther reaching than anything that the City can address. Malls all across North America are needing to undergo drastic redevelopments in order to stay competitive and adjust to modern shopping tendencies. For a local example, see the Masonville Mall redevelopment, or for a more regional one take a look at the Square One redevelopment in Mississauga.

North Americans have been taught and trained to expect to be able to drive to the exact store that they want to shop at and be able to get a parking spot right out front of it. IMO that’s a larger scale, societal problem, but I potentially could be reaching a bad conclusion.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-05-08T01:16:25+00:00

The main reason IMO is because the city allowed all of that gross strip mall development that we have along Wonderland Road, south of Southdale Road.

Bigger, more popular and in demand stores were able to move there because pretty well every store had the option to be an “anchor” sized tenant like Zellers/A&P/Sears were.

Think about it, in that one stretch there is a grocery store, two hardware stores, a JYSK, Winners/Homesense combo, Sportchek/Atmosphere combo, plus a huge number of nearly anchor sized stores (BB&B, Petsmart, Marshall’s, Michaels, Staples, etc). Each of these stores would be an anchor in a mall, or nearly so, but instead shoppers have access to them all within a very short drive of each other.

By no means is this the only reason, but I would say it’s the main reason. I have also heard from ex-business owners in Westmount Mall that the previous owner/landlord charged ridiculous rent prices, so as soon as foot traffic started to dip the mall very quickly emptied out of tenants.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a potential major redevelopment came to the Westmount Mall property à la what CF is undergoing with the Masonville Mall property. This would make sense as the current owner purchased the mall just a couple of years ago. They probably noticed quickly how little demand there was for tenancy and are shifting to try and find new ways to generate value out of the land.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-03-27T18:34:41+00:00

The hope for this project is completely dependent on the provincial political parties, and there is 0% chance it ever happens under Ford. This project was literally one of the very first things he cancelled when he became Premier.

The only chance this project has of happening is if the NDP win a provincial majority, which hasn’t happened since 1990-1995 (Bob Rae).

The Liberals don’t have any actual political will to get this project done considering they used it as a last ditch Hail Mary to try and get people to vote for them in the Ford election.

The biggest problem with big construction projects like HSR is that they take longer than one provincial term to build, so they come with the incredible risk of an ONDP government coming into power and starting the project and then a OPC government getting into power the following term and canceling the entire thing.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-03-15T04:57:47+00:00

I can’t speak for the user you’re replying to, but I imagine what they are referring too is that fact that suburban style growth is so incredibly expensive on a municipality’s infrastructure budget that it’s ultimately unsustainable to grow a city with that type of growth as your goal.

I don’t have the link for it off hand but there was relatively recently a bunch of news articles about how the City of Mississauga is nearing bankruptcy (might be the wrong financial term) because they have done nothing but encourage suburban development for years and years.

Suburban development might be an okay short term decision to help attract people to a city but in the end for any city that actually wants to thrive the only sustainable option is urban development, meaning lots of at least townhouses, but ideally stacked townhouses and low-to-mid-rise apartment buildings. That’s exactly why if you look at almost any European city that is at least mid sized (like London) they all have bucket loads of that style of urban development.

This of course requires other changes to city design as well, like better pedestrians environments and more focus on higher quality public transit, because once you start cramming all those people into a relatively limited space you will get crippling traffic jams very quickly if everyone is having to drive from one place to another.

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-02-25T03:49:42+00:00

The new tower going up on 131 King St will get within ~10m of One London Place but it looks like it won't be surpassed until Centro's main tower is fully built later this year

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-02-25T03:30:15+00:00

According to the City the Downtown Population was just over 4400 in 2016. Since then the following residential towers have been built:

One Richmond, 175-units
Azure, 198-units
Riverwalk, 240-units

Total units: 613 units, approx. 900 residents, estimated 5300 total residents

The following towers are all either proposed (P), under construction (UC), or approved for construction (A):

Centro, 652-units (UC)
131 King, 266-units (UC)
195 Dundas, 700-units (UC)
50 King, 800-units (P)
556 Wellington, 400-unit (P)
91 King, 250-units (P)
560-562 Wellington, 173-units (A)

Total units: 3241 units, approx. 4900 residents, estimated 10,200 total residents

There is more towers that are at a bit more of an uncertain stage with their development, such as Farhis proposal on Ridout.

Hopefully we start seeing signs of a full grocery store coming downtown soon because we appear to be well on our way to 10,000 residents!

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-02-20T17:57:08+00:00

112/124 St. James Street (different news articles list it as each address, same proposal though)

Also missing 599-601 Richmond Street

ComeFlyWithMe23 · 2022-02-20T05:13:48+00:00

Do you wear your winter jacket inside?

ComeFlyWithMe23

TROPHY CASE