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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

Something from Moda always causes excitement. Looking forward to seeing the design when it comes out.
MichaelS said:
Looks like there is a new tower DP in the beltline, MODA is the applicant:
Land Use application here:
DP application here:

Planned for the NW corner of 2nd Street and 15th Avenue SW:
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outoftheice said:
There's a neat historic looking brick walk up on the 2nd St side of that property. It would be a shame to lose it. Hopefully the proposal incorporates the building in some way.
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The building is the Rossmore Apartments built in 1910. There are no legal protections. I'm a big fan of MODA's work, but it would be a disgrace if they tore it down regardless of what design they have in store.
 
Question for you smart folks:

Let's say I am a condo board or building owner of one of the Beltline's 1970-80s developments. In this example, we are looking at the building right across from the new Redstone Tower at 14 Ave and 7 Street SW. Taking immediate political issues aside (e.g. getting the condo owners to agree), how could I sell this section circled in blue off to a developer and redevelop it? Would it be worth it for me? Would it be worth buying as a developer? What is 0.25 acres of land worth in the Beltline? Other than convincing owners, what would be the main hangups when attempting such a move?

I am curious about this because we have loads of development potential that is locked into inefficient forms due to wild site layouts and parking requirements that have since all been reduced and relaxed. If there was ways for owners or owner groups to unlock this excess value, you could pay for an expensive building maintenance or return it to the owners. I am not taking about small useful slivers of parcels either: this example is roughly 25m x 40m (0.1ha or 1/4 acre). It has no underground parking or structures associated with the building, apart from a concrete outdoor overhanging parking roof thing of about 8 stalls. Not any visible structural challenges to redevelopment.

1589571657307.png



A similar question could be asked of all the Beltline's churches with parking lots from the 1970s, as well as commercial properties where we required an insane parking amount at the surface back then. See below:

1589572787451.png


1589572842057.png


Happy long weekend! Curious if anyone has any thoughts.
 
CBBarnett said:
Question for you smart folks:

Let's say I am a condo board or building owner of one of the Beltline's 1970-80s developments. In this example, we are looking at the building right across from the new Redstone Tower at 14 Ave and 7 Street SW. Taking immediate political issues aside (e.g. getting the condo owners to agree), how could I sell this section circled in blue off to a developer and redevelop it? Would it be worth it for me? Would it be worth buying as a developer? What is 0.25 acres of land worth in the Beltline? Other than convincing owners, what would be the main hangups when attempting such a move?

I am curious about this because we have loads of development potential that is locked into inefficient forms due to wild site layouts and parking requirements that have since all been reduced and relaxed. If there was ways for owners or owner groups to unlock this excess value, you could pay for an expensive building maintenance or return it to the owners. I am not taking about small useful slivers of parcels either: this example is roughly 25m x 40m (0.1ha or 1/4 acre). It has no underground parking or structures associated with the building, apart from a concrete outdoor overhanging parking roof thing of about 8 stalls. Not any visible structural challenges to redevelopment.

View attachment 245707


A similar question could be asked of all the Beltline's churches with parking lots from the 1970s, as well as commercial properties where we required an insane parking amount at the surface back then. See below:

View attachment 245711

View attachment 245712

Happy long weekend! Curious if anyone has any thoughts.
Click to expand...

If a building has a condo association, getting the buy-in to do an intensification/redevelopment seems like a political nightmare. I don't know how you raise the capital from the ownership group if there are even a few vocal opponents.

I don't know anything about the church situation, seems like 1970's churches do have too much parking the world over. Need to find the ones with motivation to act.

I have looked at a couple of B/C class rental buildings that are on under-developed parcels. The deals I looked at were not in the Beltline but other inner neighborhoods like Renfrew and Bankview. The basic numbers look pretty good to me, you buy the existing units at $160-180k each at a 4% cap rate but the redevelopment potential is "free". There will be some permitting risk since it is likely that redevelopments will need either a land use change or some meaningful DP relaxations to make the best building configuration work. It is something I would like to explore more seriously once this Covid situation calms down and valuations are more stable.
 
zagox said:
If a building has a condo association, getting the buy-in to do an intensification/redevelopment seems like a political nightmare. I don't know how you raise the capital from the ownership group if there are even a few vocal opponents.

I don't know anything about the church situation, seems like 1970's churches do have too much parking the world over. Need to find the ones with motivation to act.

I have looked at a couple of B/C class rental buildings that are on under-developed parcels. The deals I looked at were not in the Beltline but other inner neighborhoods like Renfrew and Bankview. The basic numbers look pretty good to me, you buy the existing units at $160-180k each at a 4% cap rate but the redevelopment potential is "free". There will be some permitting risk since it is likely that redevelopments will need either a land use change or some meaningful DP relaxations to make the best building configuration work. It is something I would like to explore more seriously once this Covid situation calms down and valuations are more stable.
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Does anything stop the condo development from just subdividing their land? Avoid the buying them out part (of course the problems of incentivizing and getting an agreement remains).
 
darwink said:
Whether the land is worth anything with the regulatory risk would be the real problem.
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It would take a savvy group, but could the current condo owners de-risk this by doing the leg work up front and applying for subdivision? There is probably somewhere along the process that would make sense for the current owners to do it, then sell for developers to do there rest. There is about 100 units in this building with sales prices around 200 - 300K, and there was an opportunity to sell the remnant parcel for $2M, that would gross $20,000 per unit, not a immaterial amount of value if you could figure out how to do it logistically and politically.

I am assuming nothing like is priced into the purchase price of old units, so it could be a bit of arbitrage windfall or could be used offset a major repair that would typically be paid for by a special assessment.
 
luk_o said:
Just NO. Don't mess with the few blocks that actually contribute to 4th. Very much against this. So many other locations in the Beltline that deserve the wrecking ball over this.
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Exactly. Reminds me of the ASI sites along 17th ave and their plan to "upgrade 17th ave" by redeveloping already cool or busy spots instead of some of the empty lots or drive through fast food places.
 
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