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Originally Posted by WinCitySparky
Yeah I mean I’m happy for the building being built but I can’t believe the city just allows such low standards on such a high profile street like this. It’s a fucking crime. It truly doesn’t help the stereotype that Winnipeg is a substandard city. Driving up to it from the north it just…hurts. Then you go around the corner and see 197 and it’s like night and day, the difference in overall aesthetic quality. Dramatic, the difference.
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I don't get what people want the City to do with respect to implementing higher design standards. If standards are too high, you'll choke the market with "excess red tape" and inflate costs for developers, pushing them away from the very areas you want development to occur. You're not going to regulate yourself out of ugly design. Design is going to be a function of what the market can bear (rental rates for the area, interest rates, etc.), not government regulation.
The average rent in the Osborne Village area is $1,256 for a 2 bedroom, while it is $1,345 near the UofM, and it is $1,761 in the Bridgwater neighborhoods. Meanwhile, average rents for a 2-bedroom are $2,574 in central Toronto and $3,109 in downtown Vancouver. All these different neighborhoods have different upper limits on rent that can be charged by new construction, and therefore will ultimately influence the design selected by builders for fit their financial goals. If every developer expects to pull a 5% to 10% return on their investment regardless of the City they develop in, then obviously lower market rental rates is going to equal lower development costs which means lower design standards and cheaper materials. Plus, tenants are going to care more about inside furnishings than what the building looks like on the outside, so naturally nice design is going to be the first thing to go for developers who need to make the numbers make sense.
You can't regulate yourself out of this. The best you can hope for is for rents to rise naturally in neighborhoods over time as a result of increased desirability and increased scarcity of easily developable land. You have to start from the bottom up, and so as long as any development is occurring in central neighborhoods, I'm happy, even if design is subpar. Because eventually, increased population leads to increased activity and safety, which may lead to increased desirability, development, rents, and increasing design standards.
City aesthetic regulations beyond the bare minimum will just push potential developers away to areas where they can seek higher rents unimpeded by burdensome regulation, further exasperating housing affordability.
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