So long downtown parking, hello shoe shopping
By Dave McGinn, National Post
When
Jennifer Lee moved from Etobicoke to a condominium downtown last year,
the 33-year-old consultant quickly got her financial priorities in
order. Why, she reasoned, would she buy a car when she could instead
spend her money on some of the finer things in life.
“I would rather buy a $500 pair of shoes every month than have a car,” Ms. Lee says.
Like
Ms. Lee, many of Toronto’s downtown condo dwellers can afford to live
well because they no longer need to spend a small fortune on a car. If
they can’t walk to their destination, they can take transit or, like
Ms. Lee, join a car-share program for those days when they need a set
of wheels, saving as much as $1,000 a month to spend elsewhere.
The Canadian Automobile Association
estimates it costs $8,000 to $14,725 each year to own and operate a car
in Canada. It may be a necessary cost for people with families to cart
around or long commutes to work. But some people who live downtown are
forgoing the expense of car ownership in favour of a higher quality of
life.
“If you live downtown, you just don’t need a car,” says Brad Lamb, president and CEO of Brad J. Lamb Realty Inc. and founder of Lamb Development Corp.
Many condominium developers, Mr. Lamb says, do not want to provide parking because of the costs.
“Parking
is very expensive to provide. Typically, if you go below three floors
of parking, you begin to lose a lot of money per parking space. It
probably costs a builder $40,000 per spot up to the third floor below
grade. They sell them for $25,000 to $30,000. If you go below three
floors it’s expensive to keep excavating, so nobody wants to go below
three floors,” he says.
As well, says Mr. Lamb, the demand
for parking has drastically decreased over the past six years as the
condo market has seen an influx of younger buyers, typically people in
their twenties.
“The condo market in the city has changed,”
Mr. Lamb says. “It’s tremendously skewed to younger people. The cost of
a car, for many people, has just become a luxury item they’re prepared
to live without.”
Indeed, says Mr. Lamb, the condominiums his
company helps design in Toronto’s downtown core are specifically
designed to address both the cost of providing parking and the lower
demand.
“Parking for us is always an economic problem,” he
says. “We don’t want to provide as much parking that probably the
market would like because it’s too expensive and difficult to do. So we
design the buildings to alleviate that issue. We design the buildings
to have a significant number of small apartments to cater to people who
don’t need cars, and we also throw in an Autoshare in every building
now.”
Ms. Lee joined Autoshare
when she moved into her condo at Spadina Avenue and Richmond Street in
September. She uses the service once a week to take her cello to
lessons and to go grocery shopping. The rest of the time she is content
to either take transit or walk.
At $9.50 per hour, plus a $35 annual fee, it is much cheaper than owning a car.
“Whether
it’s gas prices, insurance prices, traffic, pollution, the environment,
global warming — you name it, every one of them makes it more practical
and more economical to drive Autoshare,” says Autoshare president Kevin
McLaughlin. Autoshare launched in Toronto in 1998. It now has a fleet
of 180 cars and nearly 7,500 members.
In 2006, another car share program, U.S.-based Zipcar, entered the Toronto market. It now has a fleet of 300 cars and 10,000 members.
“Car
sharing is all the benefits and rewards of having access to a car 24/7,
and all the convenience and freedom of having access to a car 24/7
without the burden of car payments, insurance payments and gas
payments,” says Michael Lende, general manager of Zipcar Toronto. “Any
urbanite, any person who lives in a city, doesn’t need to own a
vehicle. It’s just not necessary.”
George Diavolitsis, a
33-year-old manager at a laser surgery clinic, sold his car after
moving to a building at Bay and Charles streets 18 months ago.
“It’s
literally like putting money in your back account,” he says. Instead of
shelling out for parking tickets or maintenance, as he once did, he
joined Zipcar when he moved downtown.
“I use it about once or
twice a week for grocery shopping or to go snowboarding in
Collingwood,” he says. “Just having a car sit idle is expensive
enough,” he says. “Parking is $140 a month in my building.”
Greg
Bonser joined Autoshare close to five years ago when he bought a South
Riverdale condo, motivated by concerns both environmental and
financial.
‘
‘I’ve looked in to it, but then I started doing
the math and figuring out what it was actually going to cost me to own
a car and it looked like the number was about the same as it would cost
to have a year’s worth of mortgage payments on some property. So I
decided to spend my money on real estate,” says Mr. Bonser, a
30-year-old architectural designer.
“The amount that I’m spending each month on Autoshare is significantly less than if I had to own a car.”
Like
many people who live downtown, Mr. Bonser says that he would rather
spend his money eating out and on other items rather than have to pay
for owning a car.
“The money finds a way to get spent, so
it’s not like I have it in my pocket,” he says. “But there’s definitely
some savings happening there.”
Photo of Jennifer Lee by Peter Redman for National Post
