February 5th - 2006

Opportunities will grow with waterfront development

Toronto’s waterfront represents a great opportunity for business and REALTORS as revitalization efforts are working to create cultural institutions, commercial enterprises and residential communities.

Toronto’s waterfront represents a great opportunity for business and REALTORS as revitalization efforts are working to create cultural institutions, commercial enterprises and residential communities.

That was one of the messages the city’s Mayor David Miller told attendees at the Real Estate Forum in Toronto, November 29 to December 1, in a session on challenges facing Canadian cities.

Miller said that the 10-year waterfront revitalization plan will include a diversity of architecture as well as a diversity of land use and people. Along with film, animation, media and communication industry, the plan calls for 40,000 new housing units which will ensure “a vibrant street life.” One quarter of the planned homes are slated for low income families, said Miller, to allow a wide variety of people with a wide variety of incomes to live near the waterfront.

New parks and open spaces are also a part of the plan, as are a full range of community and recreational facilities and services to allow people to live and work and play in the area.

Investing in our cities
The new development helps to address the issues in Toronto that many large cities face, and that is of population growth (mostly from immigration), increased need for housing and services, but decreased revenue to pay for those services.

“Infrastructure is struggling to keep up {in cities),” said Michael Harcourt, former mayor of Vancouver and former premier of British Columbia, and currently sitting as chair of the Prime Minister’s External Advisory Committee on Cities and Communities.

Waste management, sewer problems and transit gridlock are all issues his committee is addressing as it looks at the problems in Canada’s cities.

Safe public transit, easy access to all North American cities, a highly educated workforce and a varied immigrant community with international contacts makes Toronto an attractive option for investment, but Toronto’s business community is more heavily taxed than its counterparts in other Canadian cities. Mayor Miller also said that government needs to end the practice of subsidizing businesses to move from Toronto.

Miller said that he believes that it is the responsibility of the government to build and invest in the public realm to make cities safer and more prosperous, but that he believes that the private sector must also contribute to building the public realm. The collaboration with business makes for a cleaner city, improves quality of life and attracts more business.

Addressing funding, both Miller and Harcourt said that cities can’t rely on property taxes alone. New sources of revenue are needed and Toronto needs a greater cut of the money that leaves the city in taxes each year. And while the city now gets a full rebate on GST, freeing up money to spend on local priorities, $11 billion each year still leaves Toronto to other parts of the country. Harcourt also said that Toronto should upload social service cost, as the cost of the Ontario Disability and Support Program puts a strain on Toronto’s budget, a burden cities in other provinces don’t carry.

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