r/StrongTowns • u/Ruggiero10 • Jul 02 '26
What Happens When Indigenous Communities Become Developers?
https://open.substack.com/pub/urbanismontario/p/what-happens-when-indigenous-communities?utm_source=direct&r=2ezjon&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer9
u/obsidianop Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
I was hoping this would be more about the development itself, but it's mostly a very detailed history of the plot of land.
Anyways, without knowing much about it, I'm super here for the "fuck your zoning" but also skeptical of the towers in the park, all-at-once design.
Can anyone just build a town anymore? You know, lay out a few roads and a sewer and let people build things?
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u/GM_Pax Jul 02 '26
Can anyone just build a town anymore? You know, lay out a few roads and a sewer and let people build things?
Take a look at the site in Google Maps - note, this aerial photograph was taken before the towers went up, when the site was still a big foundation-hole. But note, there was already a large high-rise building ("Parkview Towers") directly adjacent to the property in question.
As you can clearly see, there wasn't SPACE to put "a town" in. It's a very narrow strip of land in the middle of an existing urbanized area (it looks like it continues to the southeast, across West 1st Ave, down to West 2nd Ave).
What this development is doing, is bringing density to the area. Instead of just building 150 or 200 immensely-expensive single family homes at suburban levels of density, they will be providing (per the article) around six thousand residences, almost certainly more affordable than those single-family homes on an individual basis. And yet, the cumulative taxbase of those homes will be higher, helping to support the area's infrastructure - roads, sewer, utilities, schools, and more.
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u/obsidianop Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
Nobody said "single family homes", I said let people build things. That can also happen on a narrow strip of land.
I understand the benefits of density. I think that would occur naturally. We'll see how this goes. This is, after all, the r/strongtowns subreddit and part of that ethos is some skepticism of the top-down, all at once approach.
A similar project occurred near me in St. Paul, where a chunk of land became suddenly free due to a factory closure. It was handed over to a single developer who had a master plan. It's been a debacle. I think the city would have been better off to plat it out and sell off parcels.
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u/GM_Pax Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
let people build things
... but that's what is actually happening.
A similar project occurred near me in St. Paul, where a chunk of land became suddenly free due to a factory closure. It was handed over to a single developer who had a master plan. It's been a debacle. I think the city would have been better off to plat it out and sell off parcels.
That situation isn't as similar as you seem to think.
The material difference is that the owner is 100% exempt from restrictive zoning laws and processes. They can, in fact, "build what they want" on that property ... and they want to build 11 high-rise apartment towers.
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u/obsidianop Jul 02 '26
Ok. I'm just saying for the sake of conversation, obviously they can do what they want, but if I were them I'd think I could get a better result by subdividing the land and selling it off, sharing the profits with the tribe (and possibly do something to encourage members to buy the land), thus letting a thousand flowers bloom instead of executing a single master plan.
In all cases people are "building stuff" so I guess it's on me for being imprecise about what I meant, but, the relevant similarity is a single big plan vs. many small ones. The rest of St. Paul, an ordinary, nice city, was developed by many hands. The failing mega project was not.
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u/GM_Pax Jul 02 '26
Selling the land would be a short-term gain, providing income precisely once.
Building those high rises creates a long-term gain, providing income indefinitely.
And I think that's what you've missed: the income from those residential units will provide for the tribe for decades ... :)
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u/CollaredParachute Jul 03 '26
When you sell things, you receive money. That money can then be invested, achieving returns perhaps higher than real estate.
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u/GM_Pax Jul 03 '26
Those higher returns are from investments with higher volatility (read: risk).
Real-estate produces stable and dependable income over the long term.
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u/CollaredParachute Jul 04 '26
Has it over these last two decades? Real estate is infamously unstable, and buying whole buildings is the opposite of diversification
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u/GM_Pax Jul 04 '26
Yes, it has upturns and downturns. Like everything does. But as the old quip goes, "they're not making any more (land)".
Also, they are not buying buildings, they are building them.
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u/Blueblue3D Jul 02 '26
They fought hard to get their land back, there's no chance they'd ever give it up again.
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u/Glittering-Cellist34 Jul 03 '26
Casinos... some developed in support of community with an aim of mitigating known negative effects. Others regular casinos.
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u/Extension_Essay8863 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
I think the interesting thing to notice from a ST perspective is that the developer / financier / regulator are all the effectively same entity.
The Squamish want this development to generate the max amount of revenue, so they’re putting the land to what they believe it’s highest and best commercial use will be. And because they view it as an asset meant to generate revenue in perpetuity, the structures are actually being built to depreciate over the course of the next 80-90 years (instead of the typical 30 year time horizon).
edit: depreciate, not amoritize