Should “Green & Clean” Force Us To Change Ontario Building Codes?

Development

9 minute read

April 29, 2019

Following American politics is literally a full-time job.

The country is larger than ours, more complicated than ours, and definitely crazier than ours.

They also have only two political parties, which makes absolutely every argument only two-sided.  Everything is black or white.  There is very little room for any sort of “in-between.”

I’m convinced that the concept of “unbiased media” is no longer possible in our world, and so I sometimes find myself reading Fox News even though it’s propaganda, just to balance out CNN, which is also propaganda, if we’re being completely honest.

So any time I read something in the newspaper or online, I have to Google it and read about it through multiple other sources just to find out what’s true, what’s not, and what’s exaggerated.

The president of the country himself decided two years ago that anything he disagreed with would be branded “fake news,” and while I thought that would never fly, and people would see through it, I could not have possibly been more wrong on that one.

I don’t know what to believe anymore.  It’s as though journalistic standards for the top media outlets around the country have fallen to the level of basement-dwelling movie-blogger.

And then when people are proved to be incorrect, you get what Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez spouted on Anderson Cooper about how there’s a difference between being “factually correct” and “morally correct.”

Good grief.

It almost makes Canadian politics look meagre by comparison right?  RIGHT??

This weekend, I read what the Mayor of New York City said about the, um, future of development in the city, and I immediately thought that the story had to be exaggerated.

Do you folks know what I’m talking about?

Yes?  No?

For those of you in the latter camp, I envy you.  I’m like a moth a flame when it comes to politics, and negativity, which, ironically is politics, but I digress.

The Mayor of New York City, as I read it first, announced a ban on the construction of buildings with glass and steel.

Right.

And if you’re like me, your immediate reaction was, “Okay, so this can’t actually be true, so what’s the real story, and how has this been spun?

Well, twenty articles later, and I still don’t really know what’s what.

Here’s what was written in the New York Post:

 


 

De Blasio: Glass skyscrapers ‘have no place on our Earth’
New York Post
April 22nd, 2019

 

Yabba-dabba-don’t.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is preparing to take New York City back to the stone age — by making “glass and steel” skyscrapers extinct.

Still flirting with a run for president, the mayor held an Earth Day press conference on Monday to announce his plan to fight climate change with a “Green New Deal” — including a bill designed to eliminate new glass-fronted towers from the city skyline.

“We are going to introduce legislation to ban the classic glass and steel skyscrapers that have contributed so much to global warming,” de Blasio said.

“They have no place in our city or our Earth anymore.”

Despite Hizzoner’s insistence on repeatedly using the word “ban,” he later admitted his legislation would actually just tighten the city’s energy code to make it prohibitively expensive to develop glassy high-rises.

“It’s literally going to be a much higher standard and the only way that kind of design would even be acceptable is with a whole host of other changes were made to compensate because those buildings were inherently very inefficient,” he said.

Mark Chambers, director of Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, was forced to clarify that “it doesn’t mean buildings can’t use glass anymore.”

He pointed to the recently erected American Copper Building in Murray Hill — a K-shaped structure clad in copper and glass — as an example of a structure that would still be ­acceptable.

De Blasio cited unspecified buildings in the Hudson Yards development as “examples of the wrong way to do things.”

Hudson Yards developer Related later hit back by pointing out that it has just opened a glass office building that is certified LEED platinum — the US Green Building Council’s highest designation — and is “one of New York’s most energy-efficient Class A office towers.”

The mayor’s Green New Deal — a title borrowed from freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s vague and pricey plan to cut carbon emissions — will hold builders to such sky-high standards that even developers who’ve focused on staying eco-friendly will be punished.

Last week, the City Council passed a bill to slap strict greenhouse emissions caps on private buildings exceeding 25,000 square feet by forcing them to retrofit pipes, heating systems, lights and other utilities by 2024 or face big fines.

The Bank of America Tower on 42nd Street, for example, is certified LEED platinum, but developer the Durst Organization calculated that it would still face $2.5 million in fines under the new bill when 2024 rolls around.

“The fine will escalate annually from there,” chief development officer Alexander Durst told Crain’s.

Critics say the new measures are unrealistic — there likely aren’t even enough contractors to get all 50,000 affected buildings up to code in time, and the pie-in-the-sky targets will just turn businesses away from the Big Apple.

Meanwhile, smaller buildings, hospitals, NYCHA housing complexes, and “affordable” housing won’t be subject to the same rules.

“The caps that they are expected to meet are unrealistic,” said Carl Hum, general counsel for the Real Estate Board of New York, said of office towers.

“The law doesn’t taken into account what the building does. Tech and media are energy intensive. You’re going to have an owner who will think twice on who they rent out to avoid fines.”

Hum said the glass and steel “ban” announcement had blindsided the ­industry.

One expert said she expected “pushback” because glassy buildings are all the rage among designers and a hit with customers.

“I think architects are in love with the uniform skin,” said Hillary Brown, a professor at the City College of New York’s School of Architecture.

“It’s just been a trend for so long and I think we need to use architectural imagination in considering other building enclosure treatments.”

De Blasio said he doesn’t care what one of the most important industries in the city thinks.

“We certainly felt the opposition at the real estate lobby in these last months, but to the credit of everyone here, we said we don’t care how much opposition there is,” he said.

The mayor’s goal is to reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2030.

Among other elements of Hizzoner’s eco-friendly scheme, the mayor plans to make his struggling composting program mandatory — even though he put it on hold last year because residents weren’t ­participating.

De Blasio said he plans to pass bills for the glass and steel building “ban” and forced composting program this year — while admitting he doesn’t have a timeline for the rollout of the latter because it will take “a lot of public education.”

 


 

I could have taken an excerpt, but, again, the problem with excerpts is they allow the user to bias the reader with what is used, and what is not.

Then again, if you’re like me and you follow politics, media, and business religiously, you know that the New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is “on the right” as they say in the United States, so this article is written with an agenda in mind.

In any event, you can’t change a direct quote, and the Mayor of New York City did suggest a “ban” on concrete and glass in the construction of buildings in New York.

Imagine that.

In a vacuum, it’s brilliant.  It would get us one step closer to saving the planet.

In reality, it’s absolutely non-sensical.

Some will suggest that it’s not far-fetched and that it’s about “being progressive” or “starting somewhere,” but I think it’s impossible.  I know it is.

As with so many widly-outlandish suggestions by politicians on the left or right, this idea seems to ignore the fallout and/or unintended consequences, like the cost of building skyrocketing, new residential construction plummeting, and real estate prices rising, oh, I dunno, maybe 1,000%.

I don’t want to delve into a political conversation here, but rather discuss the merit of the NYC Mayor’s idea, as well as the potential for ideas like this to gain momentum.

Maybe he wasn’t serious.

Maybe he was just looking for a sound-bite.

But maybe there are others out there thinking, “If the Mayor of one of the most famous cities on the planet believes we can move forward with buildings made from something other than glass and steel, then perhaps City X, Y, or Z can too.”

My inner cynic finds it tough to take one step forward when one, or even two, steps are being taken back.

I believe I’ve told this story before, but when I went to the Air Canada Centre for the first time in ten years this past February, and as my drink of choice – rye and gingerale, is served in plastic cups, I brought my cup back up to the bar when I needed a refill.  When I told the woman I wanted another rye and gingerale, but I wanted it in this cup, she grabbed the cup, threw it in the garbage, and said something snarky, the content of which completely eludes me right now.  But when I pressed her, she said that the inventory at the ACC is based on the number of plastic cups used, so it would be impossible for them to reuse a cup.

So then why bother trying, right?

The ACC is using 10,000 cups per night, 200 nights per year?  And me putting one goddam broccoli stem in my Green Bin is going to make a difference?

I can’t help but be cynical, and then I’m reminded of the people who clamour, “We have to start somewhere.”

I wrote about my disdain for bike lanes a few years ago, and the backlash was something fierce.  One comment, and only one comment, really stuck with me, and it was from a person who essentially said, “No, the bike lanes in Toronto aren’t jammed with cyclists today, but their implementation is about being progressive.”

I still think the bike lanes are ridiculous, given our harsh Canadian winters, but I do see the progressive element.

So then, when I read that the Mayor of New York City wants to ban concrete and glass towers, that teenie-tiny part of me that I wish I didn’t have inside me, stops me from dismissing the idea entirely.

There may be a point in ten years, fifty years, or two-hundred years where we’re not building condominiums from glass and steel.

Two years ago, a blog reader sent me an article published in Wired about plans to build an 80-storey tower made from a timber-frame.  I didn’t write about it at the time, because I thought it was a joke.  And upon reading all these articles about the mayor of New York City this past week, I looked up that article once again.

“Get Ready For Skyscrapers Made Of Wood. (Yes Wood)”

I dismissed this as a pie-in-the-sky, hippie think-tank project (which it may still be), but on Sunday I found myself going back to this.

I don’t want to get too dramatic here, but once upon a time, people thought that “the automobile” would never, ever replace the “bicycle” as the most common means of transportation.

Here are a few other choice failed-predictions from more than a century ago:

1876: “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not.  We have plenty of messenger boys.” — William Preece, British Post Office.

1876: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” — William Orton, President of Western Union.

1889: “Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time.  Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison

1903: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.

So maybe, possibly, likely-not-but-there’s-a-chance, the mayor of New York will be looked upon in one hundred years as the man who started it all.

In the meantime, I just have no idea where the future of building is going to take us.

This “ban” in NYC is not going to happen, but I can see building codes changing dramatically as we move forward.

Energy-efficient buildings in Toronto don’t get nearly as much attention as they did ten years ago, and I find that odd.

The first time I had really heard of LEED was around 2005 or thereabouts, and for the next few years, it seemed as though condominium developers strove to achieve LEED certification, and what’s more is that I actually had buyers that wanted to target these buildings!  Not a lot, but off the top of my head I think of four condo buyers who made any building without LEED-gold or higher, a complete non-starter.

That fizzled out several years ago.

In fact, I can’t recall the last time anybody asked me about LEED.  Maybe……geez, five or six years ago?

In 2018, there were 282 buildings in Canada that received the LEED certification, raising the total to 3,712 country-wide.

1,396 of those 3,712 buildings are in Ontario.

From what I can tell, there are 84 buildings in Ontario with Leed Platinum certification, 31 of which are in Toronto, and none of them are condominiums.

222 buildings in Toronto are gold certified, including many condos.

“30Roe,” the uncreatively-named condominium at 30 Roehampton Avenue at Yonge & Eglinton, is the latest to achieve Leed Gold certification.

But looking forward, I have two questions:

1) When will LEED certification for buildings, condominiums and otherwise, be mandatory?
2) When this happens, how long until society deems it’s still not enough?

That’s when we’ll have our Mayor-of-NYC-moment, except it will be for real.

In the meantime, it’ll be business as usual in Ontario, specifically in Toronto, where developers have been running the city for the last decade.  The City of Toronto relies far too heavily on development levies, road closure fees, property tax from new residential units, and land transfer tax, to ever implement meaningful change.

It’s the province that oversees the Ontario Building Code, however, so in theory, the province could enact change without the blessing of the city.  But I don’t see the current regime expressing any interest in that.  Less than zero, in fact.

Just some food for thought for an otherwise uneventful Monday! 🙂

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

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12 Comments

  1. DT

    at 11:26 am

    Well, I for one was very happy to see the headline. Though of course the devil is in the details.

    My understanding is that the economics of the new all-glass condos that are so popular depend very heavily on the current cost of heating/air conditioning. It takes a lot of energy to heat/cool what is essentially a greenhouse. Given the massive investment (including sourcing the raw materials) to construct a new condo, I think we should be much more forward looking, and building these things to last. We have a finite source of raw materials and a finite source of energy with which to heat/cool. The way we’re building now seems mind blowingly short sighted.

    And as for bike lanes … I never bike when there’s ice or snow on the road. Which means I don’t bike for 3 months of the year. The other 75% of the time, bike is the best way to get around downtown. I grant you my situation is different from yours. I live < 5 km from work, and I work in a single location. I don't have to get around to meet clients in different areas of the city. But it's those of us who can do without cars that are clearing up the roads for those of you for whom a car is a necessity. You don't have to give up your car. Just help make it safe for those that can and want to.

  2. Condodweller

    at 1:23 pm

    Politics is politics. Most of us have difficulty understanding the rhyme and reason behind what goes on. House of Cards provided great insight into how things are “negotiated” in politics, basically through blackmail.

    As for what’s possible and what is going to be successful is an interesting concept. I think it was Bill Gates who said at the beginning of personal computers that every person was going to have one on their desk and a lot of people laughed at the idea. I don’t think even he could have predicted that there was going to be a computer in everyone’s pocket today.

    Someone said any new idea/concept goes through three stages of acceptance. 1. it is met by ridicule. 2. it is violently opposed. 3. it
    is accepted as being self-evident.

    Emission standards were met the same way in the US decades ago. Many said it couldn’t be done and it will be impossible to meet future standards and yet here we are. Yes, the standards are increasingly restrictive and they will restrict combustion engines out of existence but it is paving the way for electric vehicles which were also ridiculed back in the day and look at them today. If those emission standards weren’t enacted many years ago, electric vehicles would still be a pipe dream today.

    I think it will be the same thing in other areas. I don’t know the first thing about building energy efficiency but if steel and glass really are bad then I’m sure industry will come up with a better way if it is mandated by the government. I find their time frame highly suspect but it is probably just the first shot across the bow.

  3. IanC

    at 8:38 pm

    Yes, some winters are worse than others, but lanes are NOT ridiculous. I work and live downtown and have NEVER owned a car.

    Toronto is relatively flat compared to other cities in the word. It could be ideal for cycling.

    But people need to stop living in the dark ages.

  4. TOPlanner

    at 10:43 am

    “The City of Toronto relies far too heavily on development levies, road closure fees, property tax from new residential units, and land transfer tax, to ever implement meaningful change.”

    I agree with you here David. What do you think the City should do instead to pay for programs and services?

    1. Not Harold

      at 3:32 pm

      Each level of government should only be allowed one source of revenue.

      A flat income tax. A property tax (only on residential property). A sales tax.

      No other sources of revenue.

      That way EVERYONE would see what the cost was. The entire point of a plethora of taxes is to confuse the public and obfuscate the true cost of government (see also regulations that mandate other people spend money). This came up from absolute monarchies like France putting tax money directly into the King’s personal pocket.

      With highly visible revenue sources you get a more informed discussion about the size and cost of government. Are programs good value for money? Is the total cost reasonable?

  5. Housing Bear

    at 10:50 am

    Glass is a terrible insulator so I can appreciate the argument that the building we are currently building are very inefficient in this regard. Furthermore, in climates with extreme temperature swings like Toronto ( +30 in the summer, -30 in the winter) all that contraction and expansion will result in those glass walls needing to be replaced every 15-25 years. Some of the issues we have seen in City Place with windows falling from the sky is a foreshadow of whats to come.

    That being said, wood framed sky scrappers sound like a death trap to me. One careless neighbor could bring the entire thing down. Also, how many trees and forests would have
    been chopped down during the recent boom?

    To any AOC (or similar wacko) fans on here, who support statements like its better to be “morally” correct than “factually” correct. Just remember that these are also the politicians who want way more control of the system. Morally, doing something rather than nothing sounds great………. as long as that something doesn’t actually make things worse.

    1. Derek

      at 4:30 pm

      Trees are a renewable and sustainable resource if managed properly.

    2. Condodweller

      at 10:16 pm

      I heard the Royal Bank building downtown used some type of gold insulation on their glass to make them more energy efficient. The tint I used in a previous car is also manufactured for buildings which transmits light but blocks the energy of the sun. If glass is inefficient, it can be made more efficient. Not sure how it would compare with other materials then.

      Now that I have thought about it I think I like the idea of mandating builders to build efficient buildings. This way they can’t cut corners and use cheap materials and pass on the costs and the environmental impact onto the future owner/operator of the building.

      One issue is that glass makes office spaces bright and I’m not sure what other material would have that quality on top of being more efficient. That’s a major trade-off.

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