Analysis: Turning Federal Buildings Into Housing. Louis Shalako.

The balconies take up interior space, but are an option. (Google Street View).

 

Louis Shalako

The federal government is in the process of selling off or otherwise conveying surplus land and buildings in what is stated to be a stimulus for building more homes faster.

The man in charge of tens of millions of square feet of federal office space is aiming to double the government's lumbering pace for off-loading buildings.

Mark Quinlan, assistant deputy minister of real property services at Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), said the department has a "special group" in place to speed up property disposals.

"Historically, the government is not very good at disposing of surplus properties," he told a city building summit organized by the Ottawa Board of Trade Tuesday.

Policies require PSPC to consult with provinces, municipalities, other departments and Indigenous partners before putting a property up for sale. (CBC)

Analysis.

Turning an office building into residential units will require a huge retrofit of plumbing, drains, electrical, and firewall barriers between individual units. There will have to be heating, cooling and ventilation for every unit. Units will require child-safe, screened windows that open, and all of this takes time, labour and capital. It takes vision and financing. It takes zoning, something of a hot topic in the housing debate, and a factor in the success of NIMBYism. The structural addition of balconies, which is desirable enough, adds more time and complexity to any project. Now we are cutting holes in a building’s exterior, sticking in and fastening steel I-beams, forming up the typical concrete pad, adding in a sliding balcony door, adding proper railings and the like. Yet an apartment or condominium unit without a balcony makes it a somewhat harder sell.

Pictured above is the old Polysar corporate headquarters, now housing. We can see the ‘balcony problem’ has been solved at the expense of interior space. Yet it is an option.

In the building I live in, the company redid the balconies some years ago. Once the railings were down, our patio doors were screwed shut, so you could open up about five inches but children and adults could not go out onto the balcony—which, obviously, were a hazard as they had no rails. Old concrete was broken up, and what was left was a series of I-beams sticking out. You don’t just bolt that to brick walls. It has to be tied in properly to the rest of the structure. Any kind of angled truss-type bracing would interfere with the balcony and patio door directly below it, and the balcony above your unit would do the same. It’s not impossible, but it might be unsightly with a heavy frame and angle-brackets down the walls.

Cutting holes in long expanses of load-bearing structures, in order for every unit to have their own door is another consideration. Each doorway would have to be framed in heavy steel, in order to take the load of previously-existing reinforced concrete above. One way around that would be ‘vestibules’, with one (heavily-reinforced) opening from the hallway into a small common area—the vestibule. Entrance to several units would involve openings in the new, concrete-floor-to-concrete-ceiling firewalls. The vestibule would be a common area, and requires cooperation to succeed, or it becomes a hazard, with bicycles, patio furniture, when it really ought to be in storage. This area becomes a little more like a co-op, where tenants are expected to pitch in on common chores—asking folks to help shovel snow off the sidewalks and vacuum the halls is a bit of a tough ask.

However. This saves a few holes cut into load-bearing structures on a common hallway.

Here, the door framing only has to support the load of concrete blocks up to the reinforced concrete ‘deck’ of the floor above, without reference to the weight of the building above.

Baseboard heaters, all would be based on the individual unit, replacing common heat for a large corporate building, with such costs factored into the leases. This implies each unit has its own thermostat, its own electrical and water metering…another complication in the conversion process.

Reinforced concrete before the pour.

This is why old schools are not particularly good prospects for conversion, whether single or multi-story, no matter how structurally sound. In a single-story school, with no basement infrastructure, that would require all services to be overhead, in a false ceiling which must carry the water pipes, for example. All of that has to go through fire-rated wall structures. Drainage, requires cutting concrete and digging trenches below frost level…we are beginning to get the picture now.

Theoretically, one classroom, in terms of square footage, would make one small apartment. It is the services that are lacking. Each unit needs a kitchen and a bathroom, with plumbing, drainage, ventilation, all up to modern standards. With only one door, it might need some method of fire escape…

In and of itself, offloading surplus federal lands and buildings is not necessarily a bad thing.

Okay, so we’re offloading lands and buildings for a nominal sale price of $1.00, a building for a dollar, ladies and gentlemen. This is a form of subsidy, and yet most would agree that any form of subsidy is desirable, in our current very tight housing market.

That in no way makes the job of conversion any faster or easier—whether it makes it any cheaper remains to be seen.

This plan may be of great interest in the Ottawa area, Toronto, other large centres. Here in Sarnia, Ontario, there really aren’t too many federal buildings or even federal lands available for conversion or new-build housing. There is the ‘federal building’ downtown, presently housing the Post Office. Service Canada operates on Exmouth Street, this looks like a simple leased space to this observer. The courthouse, whether federal or provincial, could be leased space in a mall somewhere, and only then would the building, right across from the county jail, become surplus.

So let’s say the federal government leases space somewhere suitable and releases the old Post Office to some form of development. 

Fair enough, but waterfront property is at a premium. The likeliest outcome would be a proposal for demolition and then the construction of high-end condo or rental/leasing units. This does little to reduce housing costs in the missing middle and the low-end of apartment units. It does nothing in the face of NIMBYism.

It’s also fair to say that the process of disposing of federal assets is likely to be slow and not likely to budge the needle on the housing crisis anytime soon, although it is part of a longer-term solution.

Around here, not much joy, in other words.

Additional: In the major earthquake in Turkey, large numbers of apartment buildings came down, partly due to the magnitude of the quake, but also due to lack of proper building and construction inspections. This was exacerbated by unauthorized, un-permitted building modifications where landlords and unqualified persons were cutting windows and doors in structural elements, in order to create more units by subdividing spaces within. This comes from news sources such as Reuters and others. I really should have included this in my analysis.

#analysis

 

END

#Louis

 

Here is the full story from the CBC.

 

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon, in ebook, paperback and one, Speak Softly My Love, in audiobook format.

 

Thank you for reading, ladies and gentlemen.

 

I, Dill Bennis, Armed With Strong Mayor Powers.

Dill Bennis, Strong Mayor.

Dill Bennis

Guest Columnist

Heads will roll when I become Mayor of Sarnia, armed with the Province of Ontario’s Strong Mayor Powers, and I would sure like to thank Doug Ford, the Premier for that.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, on my first day of office, the new broom will sweep very, very clean, as the saying goes. Disruption is good, continuity is bad, as are any sort of intellectual considerations at all, as those are mostly theoretical and have no real application in life.

Up first, are all those weak and incompetent City Hall bureaucrats. I’m going to fire every little Baby Jesus-denying one of them in one fell swoop. It will be a veritable Symphony of Destruction, and about time, too. They should have been aborted at birth, and that way, at least their mothers might have learned some responsibility. (A technical point. They have the right to life before they are born, after that fuck them as they’re all probably going to grow up as weak, incompetent socialists, study piercing, or esthetics and sticking bones through their noses and plastering their hair in white mud and wearing saffron robes in some sort of anti-social, and rather gay fashion statement.)

Let them sue the city for wrongful dismissal. No cost is too high to rid the city of these appointed socialists, these sandals and shorts and floral-printed shirt-wearing pinko commie basterds…tax-sucking parasites, every damned one of them.

Let them call the lying press, let them go to the Human Rights Tribunal, which takes forever anyhow. No price is too high—we’ll get the money from the disabled, who have no reason to live because they just can’t afford it anyways.

They stand slightly to the left of Chairman Mao. Well, just so you know, I stand slightly to the left of Adolf Hitler; and I shall show no mercy to these pedophile Liberal child-groomers and polyamorous, effeminate slobs with their tattoos and their Prius hybrids and transvestite dogs and cats that lick themselves in all the wrong places…

While there may be some disruption, it will be short as we will be skipping the usual recruitment and selection process. As Strong Mayor, I will quickly appoint their successors, with minimal professional input by Liberal Elites…obey the right. Conform to the norm. I read that somewhere…

These strong and highly-competent appointees will of course be selected outside of their particular areas of expertise, as I distrust expertise, even though no one knows more than I do, and I gave up a half a million dollar a year job to become Mayor. Which as you know only pays about fifty grand a year.

That’s how much I love my city.

***

An extremely conservative person, I believe ever so strongly in democracy. One of my first bylaws will be the Democratic Freedom in Sexuality Guidelines. Under these guidelines, your neighbours will have the right to determine your gender, your orientation, and therefore, your worth as a human being, bearing in mind you should have been aborted but technically we are against that sort of thing. If they don’t like your name, they will choose a more appropriate one for you. A simple majority will rule, unless the verdict is wrong, in which case I will cast the tie-breaker in all cases, or I will phone that in from my palatial but characterless home in Bright’s Grove, to my designated deputy; who quite frankly could use a transfusion of good, red, Canadian blood and maybe a bit of a chin transplant.

The only exception shall be lesbians. Everybody loves lesbians, who, at the very least, can’t get pregnant and if nothing else, they can pretend they’re just friends and share an apartment and everyone, even their mothers, just sort of accepts it…what saves them is a physical inability to bum-fuck.

Lesbians hate kids, so we don’t have to worry so much about that. And I promise not to create a toxic work environment, not like that last guy anyways.

...lesbians hate kids, ladies and gentlemen...

But the truth is, you cannot be trusted to decide who (or what) you are. That especially holds true for children, who cannot be trusted to choose for themselves, and it is too important to leave discretion to the parents. That sort of thing is best left to guys like me, and it will be. All decisions are final, with no recourse to appeal, and all of you child-grooming sickos will just have to live with our decision, made in the interests of society, which above all requires order, and in order to have order, we must have authority. Trust me, I lie awake all night sometimes, worrying about your children.

Under this bylaw, accusation is proof of guilt and you’re lucky we provide you with a letter to sew on your prison coveralls free of charge…

***

I have always believed, like Ronald Reagan, that the best social program is a job. For that reason, all unemployed persons and other undesirables, will be employed on a rock pile, with big hammers, smashing out gravel, which will be sold at the going rate, about three dollars per ton—their income potential is unlimited, all they have to do is to put in the hours, never mind that conscript labour, harsh conditions and no real reward with which to better themselves, is the most inefficient labour of all. After costs, we will be subsidizing builders and cement workers to the tune of five or sixteen hundred dollars per ton, as the rocks will have to be trucked in, and the workers fed, clothed and housed, however temporarily. These will be accessible workplaces, as I have always believed in physical disabilities, although the cognitive ones not so much—there are too many ODSP scammers out there and we need to crack down on that too. The truth is, when you were renovicted, you made your bed and now you must lie upon it. But it’s okay, I have a plan to create hundreds of sampans, anchored in Sarnia Bay, and you can cook your tiny silver little fish on twigs and moss in an old Volkwagen hub-cap. You’re all pansies anyway.

You’re just a big bunch of fuzzy sock-lickers, that’s what I always say.

That being said, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, there is no such thing as society, even though there is something, and if nothing else, I will be in charge of bogus aphorisms around here from now on.

***

When the Sarnia Police Services request a 27 % budget increase, I will bring down my gavel, which is real enough as I got it off of Ebay, and rubber-stamp that in a heartbeat.

A Sampan.

The police are always heroes, all of the time, in all circumstances, without exception, always have been, always are, and always will be, selfless and unselfish, for all of time past and present, and no price is too high to pay for men, women, whatever. We’re not too sure about one or two, but we will weed them out, trust me on that one. I will never vote to defund the police, which one has to admit, isn’t much of a bargaining position but I said it in the paper and now we’re sort of screwed, but hey—that is who I am after all.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for these fairies to learn how to suck the cock of the fire god.

Thank you for listening, and please vote for Dill Bennis, Strong Mayor, in the event you turn up to vote at all. Quite frankly, the fewer the better, in which case I might even stand a chance—be that as it may.

Incidentally, you don’t have to click any other boxes on the ballot, one click in the right place would be enough.

Those other folks are all weak and incompetent. I would give their names, but even I am smart enough, with good legal advice from a free half-hour consultation, which I would advise for any well-to-do person, not so much their victims; ah, not to engage in libel, slander, or defamation of character.

Oh. They’re stupid, too.

 

END

 

This weird-ass Louis Shalako guy has a free audiobook, A Stranger In Paris, available from Google Play.

 

Thank you for reading.