A Toronto developer is proposing a 16 storey high-rise on a lot assembled on Gloucester Street, with some frontage on Lyon Street. It is kitty-corner the octagonal Minto Carlyle building (28 floors) and opposite the Minto-built stacked townhouse block that faces Lyon on the east side.

Here is a plan of the ground floor. What I thought noticeable is the attention paid to cyclists. There is bike storage for residents in LOCKERS for 46 residents. These storage lockers are on the ground floor. No word on whether these lockers hold more than one bike. There is also 10 storage lockers accessed off the lobby for visitor bikes. Plus bike racks on both sides of the front doors facing Lyon.

The building actually meets the city requirements for bike storage, with many of the spaces in bike rooms in the garage. But this is the first time I have seen resident bike lockers on a ground floor, let alone visitor lockers. This innovation should encourage more cycling, when cyclists are confident they have a safe storage spot for their wheels. I am much less confident that these lockers are easily accessible to cyclists … but this is a step foreward nonetheless.

In reading the traffic study for the proposed condo, why was I surprised to see it focussed, as usual, on motor car traffic? Only a passing mention to pedestrians, transit, and cyclists.

The next innovation I would like to see for a new condo would be to get rid of selling the parking spaces to individual units. The cost of the garage could be recovered by a charge on all units, rather than  spots being “sold” for the exclusive use of a few. It would make much better use of the garage spaces to have a number of Virtucar spaces (say one for every 20 units that don’t have assigned parking spots) and the rest of the spaces allocated to a mix of visitor and resident parking.