Is this Toronto’s biggest land deal ever?

Although lacking any substantiated evidence, a column in the Financial Post this week says “people” in the know say the Weston family is among bidders on a major piece of land in Toronto: the 11-acre site currently owned by the LCBO on the waterfront and potentially the city’s biggest land deal. Wittington Investments Ltd., of which 85% is owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation, is said to be in competition with two other companies.

Once a wasteland of underutilized acreage, the downtown core has been creeping ever southward in recent years, with more than 6,000 condo units proposed in the last 10 years, half of them now in some stage of active development.

As patriarch Galen Weston is reported by Bloomberg Billionaires Index to be Canada’s richest person with a net worth of about $8.7 billion US, the family will be impossible to outbid if they really want it.

Wittington owns the huge Associated British Foods company, as well as Primark, a large discount clothing chain in the UK and Ireland, as well as Selfridges, Brown Thomas and De Bijenkorf, high-end apparel and accessories retailers in the UK, Ireland and The Netherlands, respectively.

But, their history in real estate development is short and incomplete: they’re working on West Block on the site of the Loblaws Groceterias building at Lake Shore and Bathurst. The plans include retail and office space in a seven-storey redevelopment of the historical warehouse, as well as two residential towers reaching 37- and 41-storeys. Scheduled for opening in spring 2019, the project is anchored by (what else?) a Loblaws at ground level.

With little else to go on with Wittington and the other players unknown, it’s hard to root for or against anything specific, but the proposed land deal’s lakefront site could scarcely be more useless than it is now. I would love to see another “urban village” — in spite of the ubiquity of the phrase itself that is starting to make it sound hackneyed, I’m a fan. Whether residential based with a side of retail or the other way around (Canary District vs. Shops at Don Mills), they’re pedestrian friendly, pleasantly designed, community-oriented and revenue-generating.

Another reason to be excited about the city’s future.

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The Department of Finance said last week that the minimum down payment on homes with purchase prices in excess of $500,000 are rising from 5% to 10%. The change could take place as early as January 2016.

MoneySense reports that the changes would mean a graduated minimum down payment requirement based on either home value or mortgage amount, according to RateSpy founder Robert McLister. The change seems to be primarily for cooling the overheated Toronto and Vancouver housing markets, while minimizing taxpayer exposure to default losses on insured mortgages.

I don’t suspect the change will have much of an impact for the average homebuyer. Not only would the changes affect only the most expensive homes, but they’d only affect the most marginal buyers of those homes, and most of the country would be untouched. Many buyers purchasing a $500,000+ home is already putting down 10% or more.

It could mean a boost to condo sales, as those who lack the ability or the desire to wait until they can save up more than 5% will have to focus on the under-$500,000 market, which in cities like Toronto and Vancouver means condos or moving farther away from downtown Toronto.

It won’t help the lack of available properties, which is partly why home prices here are skyrocketing, and it won’t likely deter investors. It could precipitate a hotter suburban market, as those who can’t afford the down payment on a tiny $750,000 bungalow in East York may have to “settle” for a 2,000 square foot detached in, say, Whitby for $450,000. It may also send people to “B” lenders, which could exacerbate the trend towards rising personal debt.

All in all, I’d say the cons outweigh the pros, and this change will have a minimal effect.

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A new study says that the country’s worst traffic can be found in Toronto. The study, whose authors Zack Gallinger and Arik Motskin run datasets for the10and3.com, looked at “traffic stretch multipliers” calculated using Google Maps’ traffic planning tool.

These multipliers look at the difference between how long a given trip should take in free-flowing traffic conditions versus how long it takes in worst-case traffic conditions; a 1.8 multiplier would, for example, mean a 20-minute trip could take 36 minutes in bad traffic.

The multiplier in Vancouver was 1.7, in Calgary 1.9, in Regina 1.5, and in St. John’s 1.3, to give you a little perspective. Montreal’s was 2.3. But we here in Toronto like to do things in a big way and scored ourselves a whopping 2.8.

Our huge “traffic stretch” means that while you might be able to get downtown from Markham in less than half an hour in a perfect world, in reality it could take you more than 75 minutes. The Pearson to Union trip could actually see a multiplier in excess of 3 according to the duo.

While I obviously found this tidbit interesting enough to share with you, it’s hardly news to anyone who commutes. We have no more valuable resource than our time, as it trickles down to affect our quality of life in every way. I don’t think there’s a bigger crisis facing the city right now than transportation, and I’ve yet to see a viable solution.