Sidewalk Labs says its proposal for a creative and inclusive community relies, in part, on a “willingness” by Waterfront Toronto to discount the price of the land to make building the affordable housing viable.

What Google’s sister firm is imagining for its smart-city neighbourhood on the eastern waterfront is an innovative and cost-effective community, which now includes a promise to have 50 per cent purpose-built rentals and a commitment that 40 per cent of overall housing be sold or rented at below-market rates, based on presentations made to media Monday.

The proposal released Monday looked at Quayside, a 12-acre section near Parliament St., as well as nearby Villiers West.

Villiers West is land that belongs to the city and is not part of the existing deal. Sidewalk argues it needs to “scale up” its plan to make some aspects, such as its housing plans financially viable.

“Given its ambitious objective to deliver affordable housing along the waterfront, Waterfront Toronto’s willingness to negotiate a price for the land in Quayside that recognizes these requirements is a critical component of filling the remaining cost gap of the proposed housing program,” says the draft master innovation and development plan, part of a four-book collection of materials breaking down Sidewalk Labs’ latest pitch.

Quayside is expected to be home to 4,500 people, living in 10 buildings across five sites with roughly 2,600 residential units that the proposal says will include 1,000 below-market units.

The properties will be a mix of commercial and residential units and could host roughly 3,900 jobs, the proposal states.

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The broad strokes in terms of affordability, 40 per cent of “all housing units would be offered at below-market rates.” That figure breaks down to affordable rental housing at 20 per cent, mid-range rental units at 15 per cent, and a remaining 5 per cent of properties would be owned through a shared equity partnership intended to making ownership an option for people priced out of the retail housing market.

On top of private funding sources, Sidewalk has also examined eligibility for the National Housing Co-Investment Fund, run through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and the City of Toronto’s Open Door Affordable Housing program.

Those two programs could “contribute an estimated $77 million towards a below market program, including capital contributions and other incentives provided to developers.”

However the “proportionate need for those government sources would diminish” once Sidewalk starts making money off condo sales and manufacturing building components, the report states.

During a presentation Monday, Sidewalk chief executive officer Dan Doctoroff said the goal is to create a diverse and deeply inclusive community and not a gated enclave or “corporate campus” available only to an elite few.

“We doubled our efforts and now offer what we feel is a novel but viable path to delivering 40 per cent below-market housing,” following community consultations Doctoroff said.

The latest round also pledges that half of all units would be purpose-built rental, and of that 40 per cent would be “family size” and featuring two bedrooms or more.

Unit space will also be maximized, based on the plans, with multi-use furniture and extra storage on and off site.

The new proposal, if executed, would result in more than 1,700 “below-market units” spread across the Quayside and Villiers West neighbourhoods, based on the materials released Monday.

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However, Sidewalk is only currently permitted, through agreement, to work on the development of Quayside. Villiers Island, a yet to be created space east of Quayside in the Port Lands, is land that belongs to the city and is not part of the existing deal.

Doctoroff, in past interviews with the Star, said the mix of units was to be about a 50-50 split between condos and purpose-built rentals.

At that time, he said, if the project was approved this year and able to get off the ground in 2020 it would take up to seven years to complete.

Whatever is constructed comes with a promise that it will be pedestrian friendly, with minimal parking spaces and prioritizing the needs of cyclists, transit users and pedestrians.

Among the key pledges in terms of innovation is that “all buildings in Quayside be built from mass timber” that will be sourced from Ontario producers and designed to ensure lower costs and swift construction.

The materials used would, according to press materials, be produced in an Ontario based factory that would ensure “fast assembly” and “catalyze a new industry.”

David Hulchanski, a professor of housing and community development, at the University of Toronto, said it the idea that the proposed timber industry could or would be launched simply for the Quayside property is unrealistic and telling, in terms of larger planning aspirations.

“Yes, they are interested in (Quayside) but that is not why they are there, to do all this work and produce all this it is about the whole IDEA District,” which is what Sidewalk is calling a larger piece of the eastern waterfront that they envision as part of future plans.

Sidewalk’s proposal would, if approved, become one of if not the largest cluster of wood buildings in the world, officials with the firm have said.

A common form of timber used to make wood buildings is cross-laminated timber (CLT): large, thick and solid sheets of timber formed by gluing many layers of timber together at 90-degree angles.

Proponents of timber construction say the material has environmental benefits because it locks in CO2 gases and takes them out of the atmosphere, though the concrete lobby counters that the logging process creates a lot of CO2 emissions.

For all of this to work — the affordable housing targets, the timber construction, etc. — Sidewalk needs to “scale up” beyond Quayside and eventually spread across the eastern waterfront into the Port Lands, the firm says.

Sidewalk says it only wants to develop the “beta site” — Quayside and a small portion of the Port Lands that will be called Villiers West. Other interests including developers, government and businesses would take over the rest of the eastern waterfront and Port Lands, Sidewalk has said.

However, a slide deck released by Sidewalk said the firm wants to become the “innovation manager” for the “entirety” of the eastern waterfront.

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