Raise the Hammer

Mr Janitor, your story frustrates me just as much as the Pearl story. This is simply wrong and is exposing the flaws in our system. How many other folks are out there like you with great ideas, willing to invest your hard earned money to bring some life, culture and new investment to the inner city who end up just walking away in frustration unable to get projects off the ground.

And let's keep everything in perspective here. You were talking about a small coffee house with a residential unit upstairs. Ummm, that's what the buildings in that area were built for! You weren't proposing an open air concert hall that would specialize in heavy metal. A coffee house downstairs - residents above. That formula right there is how we built this city, and now it's illegal.

Folks, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are amazing projects happening on James North right now that have told the city's building department to get lost. Over-regulation and ridiculous new building code standards threatened much of the heritage integrity of some of the beautiful renovations you see happening on the street. I don't want to get anyone in trouble so I won't mention names, but there have been many attempts by the city to turn these beautiful heritage buildings into drywall boxes with no character and no history left.
Talk to small business owners on James or Locke who have to pay the city a fee because they can't provide the minimum number of parking spaces required for their business. What? Are they supposed to demolish the building next store and turn it into a parking lot? We should be trying to densify our urban core with less parking and more people/activity/uses/rehabbed buildings/businesses, not more parking lots and red tape leading to less investment and more crack, more plywood storefronts and less residents.