The Most Unnecessary Way to Set Fire to a Budget
Today’s episode: The Biggest Moving Truck on Earth
Every day, I think I’ve heard it all. And every day, the development process finds a fresh way to remind me that no, I have not.
This week’s award for “most unnecessary way to set fire to a budget” goes to our transportation consultant. Lovely person. Educated. Paid well. The kind of professional who sends polite emails with big words like “egress optimization” and “vehicular movement hierarchy.”
Their latest opinion, and let me stress this is not a law, not a bylaw, not even a line in a dusty city guideline, is that we should redesign the entire building so that the largest moving truck on the face of the earth can comfortably enter and exit our site.
Not “the average moving truck.”
Not “the kind most people use.”
Nope. The absolute unit of moving trucks. The one they use to move entire sports teams. The one you see in a documentary about NASA. The kind that, if parked on Yonge Street, would take out half the restaurants on one side and block the sun on the other.
And here’s the kicker: their position is basically, “If it can’t fit this truck, start over from scratch.”
That’s right. Months of design, hundreds of thousands in fees, consultant work, marketing timelines, construction schedules, all reset. Because somewhere in the consultant’s mind lives the fantasy of a future resident arriving with a truck so big it needs its own postal code.
Let me paint the reality:
99% of moves in Toronto use a cube van or a box truck.
Most use underground or loading docks designed for normal vehicles, not intergalactic freighters.
The rest? They figure it out. Just like they have in every building in this city since, oh I don’t know, buildings were invented.
I don’t know where these people think they’re working. This is Toronto. We build luxury condos on postage stamps. If you can get your groceries in without a street closure, you’ve already won.
If we start designing our projects for the extreme fringe case of “largest moving truck on the planet,” we might as well:
Widen the lobby so a marching band can enter in formation.
Add an elevator big enough for a moose.
Pave the roof for helicopter landings… for the day Jeff Bezos decides to pop by.
This is what makes development here maddening. You hire consultants for expertise, and some of them, bless their hearts, confuse “helping” with “dreaming up problems you didn’t have.”
So here’s what we’re doing: noting their “recommendation” in the file, and moving on. If a future buyer really shows up with the biggest moving truck in existence, we’ll have a new building amenity: the World’s Largest Curbside Delivery.
Coming Next Week: The Firetruck Entrance Redesign
Because apparently, the next round of this circus is going to be about redoing the entrance, again, so a firetruck can make a three-point turn, parallel park, and maybe even pirouette.
Not a planning requirement. Not a sensible safety guideline. Just another “strong opinion” that somehow eats months of work and burns through budgets.
Stay tuned.