Rndsqr, a homegrown smallish and growing company posted a comment on its hardship in scaling a viable townhouse business. It declared it is out of the rcg land use change and rowhouse building business due to time, fees and engagement expectations. While I’m not completely surprised I am still feeling a little shocked and saddened by this turn of events. They remain a really ambitious and innovative operator but they are stating publicly that they can’t make a go of it. This is a blow to the council and planning department that has policy in place to support this type of development. Unfortunately the policy does not provide meaningful help to the builders and often a land use application is like a war of 50 ft of city building with a community of activists and self appointed nimbys. All this while major greenfield sprawl projects sail through without proportionally equal scrutiny for entire new subdivisions. I’ve noted many times how much greater the engagement expectation is with applicants being hit with demands for full dp ready designs to be submitted along with the land use application. This is called a ‘concurrent’ application because the dp is submitted along with the land use change. I think this concurrent process works for a builder with a large budget because the reward is a quicker process. For anyone else it is just another obstacle to reducing risk. Worst case is you create a custom plan and fund a big design project and the land use fails. Then you are losing tens of thousands of additional dollars.
As an inner city specialist rndsqr made its mark in many communities with the rowhouse product it rolled out in quantities I thought unimaginable a few years ago. This pivot is a major shift for it as it focuses now on medium rise buildings like courtyard 33 in marda loop. I’m hoping rndsqr is successful in these bigger builds or we will see a lot more of the same old cookie cutter stuff take more market share.
This is really bad news for creating more vital neighbourhoods in Calgary.