darwink
Senior Member
It is $500 G a year - or $0.33 a user. I'd bet could get anthem to step up.
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General Construction Updates
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
Construction kicks off on west 17th ave and 37th street improvements.
www.calgary.ca
Some highlights for the 37th street update. They're proposing a bike lane on the east side of 37th that is not on the road itself, but set up like a parkway path more or less.
West 17 Avenue and 37 Street Main Streets construction
Some highlights for the 37th street update. They're proposing a bike lane on the east side of 37th that is not on the road itself, but set up like a parkway path more or less.
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Here are some pics from the 17th ave changes which broken into 4 zones (zones 1-4). For the most part it looks good, but zone 2 and 3 seem to be missing cycle lanes. Not sure where those went.
top view of Zone 1
Zone 2 Top View
Zone 3 Topview
Zone 4 Topview
top view of Zone 1
Zone 2 Top View
Zone 3 Topview
Zone 4 Topview
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Dārayavauš
Active Member
Just and interesting article which highlights some of the developer losses Calgary has an continues to see.
Calgcouver
Active Member
Residential concrete construction isn't a very profitable endeavor in Calgary compared to the Lower Mainland. Even our best positioned concrete condos in Kensington, Bridgeland or East Village are lucky to get $550-575psf. Concrete construction is $225-270psf. To put how low our achievable $psf are, Surrey City Centre is over $700psf, Township of Langley is $650psf and Abbotsford is $490psf.
There is a reason you don't see concrete buildings being profitable in Abbotsford and barely in Langley, and Calgary is no different. So the City can make plans for East Victoria Park being a sea of highrises and give land use to a million different TOD sites but they are not profitable to construct in concrete for the most part. So those lots will sit with sky high speculative land values for imaginary point towers that will never get built on the gravel parking lots of East Victoria Park or East Village until $psf get up to $650-700psf. Which will not happen if we keep approving endless amounts of new suburban communities. Unpopular opinion but we should zone every site in the city to accommodate low-rise woodframe and things will get built as the projects will be derisked, faster and cheaper to construct. New concrete construction just isn't going to happen in meaningful numbers at least for for-sale condos. We have so many people that get land use for large, dense projects to get the land lift and sell and who don't actually build anything. Pop that speculative land bubble, reduce land prices and fill the city with profitable low-rise projects in the short to medium term.
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Chinook Arch
Active Member
Richard White's at it again with an article that's a non-story.
The Vancouver and Toronto developers who have left, were condo builders and the condo market is down right now. Battistella is a local condo builder and are in the same holding pattern.
Nimbus
Active Member
Richard White suuuuuuuuucks.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
How do I become the next Richard White? I probably have written 100,000 words of analysis and hot-takes on this site in the past 5 years. Surely some of those rants have been more factual-ish than his stuff. Would be a good side-hustle!
I like that idea. I am curious how things are done city v. city from an approvals sense and it's impact in the economics of land. Clearly there is some distortions when we give density away endlessly forever and almost everything seems approved.
I don't know if this is true or how you would quantify this, but I feel Calgary's "development success rate" from an approval perspective has to be highest around in many market segments. So much of Toronto and Vancouver are so permanently locked in single-family housing districts they seem to barely have a redevelopment industry beyond the mega project tower developments. I can't think of another city that has Calgary's level of redevelopment and infill like Altadore, West Hillhurst and Killarney to name a few areas of that low/mid-intensity replacement. Suburbs or infill, do we really ever say no to anything?
I assume there's always much to complain about regarding fees, processing times etc. for developers and builders, but I don't get the sense from the level of development we see occurring that we as a city are prohibitively restrictive. Or in the case of giving density away all the time, the issue is the other way - we are so permissive we create a market that encourages random speculation rather than development.
darwink
Senior Member
IMO processing time, and regulatory risk is far more impactful than fees.
Cowtown
Senior Member
You and a few other people I follow on Twitter could write good intelligent articles that are 100 times better than the poly-fill he writes. Always it's the same thing, a non-story, or a story that is so vague and general and always based more on perception than fact. Nothing in depth, or factual, just fluff.
gsunnyg
Senior Member
Regardless of the article, it is a downer to see these Vancouver developers trickling out of the City. Even if they are largely concentrated in condo developments, their quality of design is usually top-notch. I'll take a Vancouver developer like Bosa over a local developer like Cidex 11 out of 10 times. I know Bosa is still interested in having a base in Calgary. We'll see if this post-pandemic boom can incentivize some of them to come back.
Sure metro Vancouver fetches a bigger price per sq.f but we also have to consider that it isn't as profitable for developers who just recently acquired land at these peak prices. A developer sitting on land before the 2017 boom hit the jackpot in terms of profit margins but I don't think land acquired in the last 4 years in Vancouver is any more profitable than compared to Calgary. Condo prices have been skyrocketing in Metro Vancouver but not as much as the value of the land has. In Vancouver, most of the developments are happening on sites that were already acquired well before the housing boom (I'm not including land for detached homes or land reassembly for row homes). Eventually (at least not in the near future) there will be a plateau in builds due to the difference in the cost for acquiring land and the revenue from the final product. Some of the land being paid for today is so ridiculously high that either large towers will need to be built in order to achieve economies of scale, rezoning will be required (if it isn't already) or some of these 1-2 bedroom condos will need to be priced ridiculously high. With wages not going up much, there likely won't be many buyers willing to pay $1 million for a condo in Burnaby at this rate.
Basically, anyone who got into the Vancouver high rise condo market before 2017 hit the Lotto, anyone who has got in or getting in after is likely playing the long game of speculation. That usually doesn't end too good, prices will either eventually plateau for a long time or correct. Calgary has a whole another problem, its lack of demand for condos.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/1608-1616-west-georgia-white-spot-redevelopment-2019-design.
This ex-White Spot site was acquired for $245 million and will build 2 towers with a total of 455 units. Just to cover the land acquisition costs the condos will have to average price at $540k ( I realize penthouse will demand a larger price and bottom floors less but just for the sake of the argument). This still doesn't include the construction, advertising, financing, etc. costs
Sure metro Vancouver fetches a bigger price per sq.f but we also have to consider that it isn't as profitable for developers who just recently acquired land at these peak prices. A developer sitting on land before the 2017 boom hit the jackpot in terms of profit margins but I don't think land acquired in the last 4 years in Vancouver is any more profitable than compared to Calgary. Condo prices have been skyrocketing in Metro Vancouver but not as much as the value of the land has. In Vancouver, most of the developments are happening on sites that were already acquired well before the housing boom (I'm not including land for detached homes or land reassembly for row homes). Eventually (at least not in the near future) there will be a plateau in builds due to the difference in the cost for acquiring land and the revenue from the final product. Some of the land being paid for today is so ridiculously high that either large towers will need to be built in order to achieve economies of scale, rezoning will be required (if it isn't already) or some of these 1-2 bedroom condos will need to be priced ridiculously high. With wages not going up much, there likely won't be many buyers willing to pay $1 million for a condo in Burnaby at this rate.
Basically, anyone who got into the Vancouver high rise condo market before 2017 hit the Lotto, anyone who has got in or getting in after is likely playing the long game of speculation. That usually doesn't end too good, prices will either eventually plateau for a long time or correct. Calgary has a whole another problem, its lack of demand for condos.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/1608-1616-west-georgia-white-spot-redevelopment-2019-design.
This ex-White Spot site was acquired for $245 million and will build 2 towers with a total of 455 units. Just to cover the land acquisition costs the condos will have to average price at $540k ( I realize penthouse will demand a larger price and bottom floors less but just for the sake of the argument). This still doesn't include the construction, advertising, financing, etc. costs
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MichaelS
Senior Member
Not to mention the development fees in Vancouver, which I once read (and may misremember, perhaps @Calgcouver would know better) are the equivalent of about $300 per square foot.
Calgcouver
Active Member
Ya they can be super high and have a lot more variability than OSLs here. Developers routinely complain about the variability in the costs for DCCs (or DCLs) and CACs and I am aware of projects that had tight enough profit margin on costs that DCCs killed the proforma, which isn't so much of a risk with our OSLs.
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Calgcouver
Active Member
Yep, you're not wrong about developers that bought land at it's peak in Vancouver, it isn't as easy as the high $psf to make development profitable, there are a number of factors that make it challenging to develop there. It also takes a lot longer to get developments going which is a risk for a lot of developments. You also occasionally have "pace of change" policies in Community Plans (LAP or ARP level) that limit the amount of development that can occur in a neighbourhood. Policies like this in the Grandview-Woodlands Community Plan that aren't terribly developer-friendly, which you'd never see in Calgary:
On another note, the two Vancouver and Toronto companies that seem to have diversified there land holdings between greenfield and inner city seem to be doing this best in this economy. Anthem acquiring United Communities was a great move and Minto doing greenfield in East Hills Crossing area was a good move. Seems to be a similar play for Truman with West District which is one of the Calgary builders with the most diverse land holdings for future developments. I know there is interest from Vancouver developers looking for large townhome sites (think Anthem's project on the old CBC site), but our outdated Land Use Bylaw with asinine contextual setbacks in the Developed Area and the relative challenge of larger parcel assemblies that are not in the hands of the big greenfield players makes it pretty tough. Also the sheer amount of duplex infills in the inner city have made it hard to find larger contiguous land assemblies to do townhomes on. The greatest negative impact is on those that are only developing point towers.