Waterloo Region Connected

Surface lot and, in all likelihood, more surface parking on the SIXO site - I suspect any significant development there is still years away.

(03-11-2019, 11:59 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-11-2019, 11:35 AM)nms Wrote: [ -> ]I guess the developers walked away with $50 million while people at street level get to deal with missing amenities until the money is found again. I can't believe that the developers would have felt an incentive to discount their units by the amount that the City allowed them to save. There are lots of places that Kitchener could spend $50 million. Kitchener will be playing catch up for a while.

Context?

In other news, looks like a settlement here:

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/921...rs-appeal/

I'm not totally clear on what the result is, not sure what they mean by "offsite" vs. "underground" parking, if it's offsite, it probably won't be underground.  I suspect this still doesn't disallow surface parking.

Either way, it seems probably not a bad thing on the whole--the discussion remaining does seem to focus on the parking garage, but I'm still rather suspicious of any neighbourhood opposing development.

This concerns me:

Quote:Parker, who said she couldn’t comment on the applicant’s decision-making process, believes the settlement is a win not only for midtown, but for established communities all along the new light-rail transit line that will soon face similar development proposals for large buildings and towers.

So basically they're hoping in stall development along the LRT, that is what I read. The city needs to kibosh that attitude.

I hope this doesn't kill the project. I am less optimistic than I was a few months ago,  Breithaupt Block Phase III reduced 2 floors, now most of the employee parking has been killed, Sixo cancelled/re-envisioning, Manulife 25 storey project cancelled.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/921...rs-appeal/

This is going to be an issue in urban neighbourhoods moving forward. It's coming

I think killing the parking garage was a reasonable decision by LPAT. It was a very small setback. (People on this board have been very critical of running the Iron Horse Trail through a narrow gap between two parking garages, so they should have some empathy for the people whose yards would be affected.)
Although this is very close to an LRT station where we want to encourage intensification, if it's just more auto-centric development it could be built anywhere in the suburbs.

I think I still would have preferred the decision to go the other way, but this isn't some catastrophe.

(03-12-2019, 12:49 AM)jwilliamson Wrote: [ -> ]… (People on this board have been very critical of running the Iron Horse Trail through a narrow gap between two parking garages, so they should have some empathy for the people whose yards would be affected.)…

Actually the objection is to re-routing a major traffic route to take a less direct path. It’s equivalent to somebody buying up the public square on either side of King at William, then asking Council to re-route all traffic on King down the laneways beside the square.

I think it's fair to say that the parking garage was less than ideal but I think it is also fair to say without it, the project could be in doubt a tiny bit. Google may have decided they need a certain number of parking spots for this project to be viable

I can sympathize with the residents' concerns about the parking garage. But most things are not going to be your ideal, especially when they're not on your property. I don't think that big surface parking lot is ideal, either.

Can anyone explain the variance in cost between below-grade and above-grade parking? I fear that this is going to mean a tonne of surface parking will remain on this site, much more than otherwise. That's the worst outcome in my opinion, and I'm speaking as someone who lives in the neighbourhood.

The article features this quote: "So, there will not be a behemoth, solid, cement-wall parking garage looming over these residential houses" and mentions that according to the plans, one resident would have been able to touch it from their backyard.

If (an important qualifier) that's an accurate description of what was proposed, then I think it's a good thing to establish relatively early in our intense growth period that isn't acceptable to abut a residential neighbourhood. My yard backs onto commercial space, but it isn't 5 storeys tall, nor can I touch it from my yard. It's a loading bay and there's enough space for 18-wheelers to navigate to it. That space makes a big difference and I don't think it's unreasonable for residents to insist that developments maintain a human scale where they are right up against two or three storey neighbourhoods.

I am generally in favour of this development, and increased density along the LRT but there are ways to do it that aren't just creating a massive wall of buildings right beside single-dwelling homes. I think the intensification of midtown along Caroline is doing a fair job. The street itself provides a strong separation between largely single-dwelling homes, and a lot of the buildings have townhouse-like looks, retail or other residential on the ground floor.

I don't think it's fair to tell people that the official plan is to keep an area mid-density then as soon as a massive international corporation wants to come in and build a giant wall turn around and throw that plan out the window and tell people they're anti-progress. There's a middle path, and I'm hopeful - not terribly optimistic, but hopeful - that however Perimeter navigates the opposing wishes of the residents and Google sets a strong president for figuring out human-scale ways of blurring the lines.

If Google decides to pack their bags and leave because they couldn't integrate with the area then that's not necessarily a bad thing. We are a strong, attractive community and if one of the world's wealthiest corporations wants to come and benefit from everything that's offered here it's worthwhile for us as residents to set the terms of that relationship. They're an extraordinarily wealthy organization and I'm strongly against rolling over simply to get them to stay.

Google won't pack and leave though, they're actually trying to be engaged in the community and knowing what I know of the local leadership they actively want to be good actors and neighbours but historically the organization has challenges with that. They cut into roads all over Louisville to experiment with shallow-buried fibre and after two years are pulling out, leaving scarred infrastructure everywhere. They encourage gentrification by bussing employees from very dense population centres to their suburban campus. They aren't particularly evil, but they make a lot of mistakes and it's really fine by me if we push back to feel confident that they aren't making one here.

(03-12-2019, 09:31 AM)robdrimmie Wrote: [ -> ]The article features this quote: "So, there will not be a behemoth, solid, cement-wall parking garage looming over these residential houses" and mentions that according to the plans, one resident would have been able to touch it from their backyard.

If (an important qualifier) that's an accurate description of what was proposed, then I think it's a good thing to establish relatively early in our intense growth period that isn't acceptable to abut a residential neighbourhood. My yard backs onto commercial space, but it isn't 5 storeys tall, nor can I touch it from my yard. It's a loading bay and there's enough space for 18-wheelers to navigate to it. That space makes a big difference and I don't think it's unreasonable for residents to insist that developments maintain a human scale where they are right up against two or three storey neighbourhoods.
....

This is a misread of the article, (I know I made the same mistake), which was already an exaggeration.

They cannot touch this parking garage "from" their back yard.  They can touch it from the other side of the laneway behind their house. That is, already standing 4 meters from their property line, and behind their own garages and parked cars.  This is probably 20 or so meters from their actual back yard.  Now I am to understand that these people may hang out in their laneway, but it is still misrepresenting things to say this is in their back yard.

I was always mixed on this (I'd love to see less parking near an LRT station) but at the same time, development is more important, and probably 9 times out of 10 the objections I hear seem to be an excuse for "no development" rather than "this development is bad, you should do x development instead".

You'll note that these folks do live in houses which are still zoned for single family low density housing, even 400 meters from an LRT station.

If the goal is to save the existing housing stock in that neighbourhood (not sure why one would want to ...), the better approach would have been for developers to acquire the entire block and to put lower rise (3-4 storeys) on the perimeter to make a transition to the SFHs. There is nothing worth saving in that block anyway. As for the rest of "Midtown", istm that the die is already cast, at least in terms of King St frontages.

(03-12-2019, 09:31 AM)robdrimmie Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think it's fair to tell people that the official plan is to keep an area mid-density then as soon as a massive international corporation wants to come in and build a giant wall turn around and throw that plan out the window and tell people they're anti-progress. There's a middle path, and I'm hopeful - not terribly optimistic, but hopeful - that however Perimeter navigates the opposing wishes of the residents and Google sets a strong president for figuring out human-scale ways of blurring the lines.

I think the "massive international corporation" is a bit of a red herring. This is development/intensification vs neighbourhood. Not the first time and not the last. A balance needs to be found.

In your view, what counts as a "giant wall"? How big a garage would you have accepted?

(03-12-2019, 10:20 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: [ -> ]This is a misread of the article, (I know I made the same mistake), which was already an exaggeration.

They cannot touch this parking garage "from" their back yard.  They can touch it from the other side of the laneway behind their house. That is, already standing 4 meters from their property line, and behind their own garages and parked cars.  This is probably 20 or so meters from their actual back yard.  Now I am to understand that these people may hang out in their laneway, but it is still misrepresenting things to say this is in their back yard.

I was always mixed on this (I'd love to see less parking near an LRT station) but at the same time, development is more important, and probably 9 times out of 10 the objections I hear seem to be an excuse for "no development" rather than "this development is bad, you should do x development instead".

You'll note that these folks do live in houses which are still zoned for single family low density housing, even 400 meters from an LRT station.

Thank you for the clarification and elaboration. I very much agree that most of the time "no development" is the preference. I do think this particular situation has a bit more nuance, or at least the neighbourhood group appears to support the development in principle and not this specific one (edit to add: I meant for this to suggest that this particular building in the development is the sticking point, not the entire project). That could entirely be a front of reasonableness and an effort block the whole thing though.

(03-12-2019, 10:26 AM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]I think the "massive international corporation" is a bit of a red herring. This is development/intensification vs neighbourhood. Not the first time and not the last. A balance needs to be found.

I agree. I bring it up because a lot of the discussion on this forum (here or in the dedicated thread) is about keeping Google around, and what they may decide to do if this development is blocked. I'm interested in keeping Google in town as well, I think they're good for the economy overall and generally good actors, but I don't think that letting this development through despite protests from the neighbourhood simply because it is Google is an ideal scenario.

I'm very happy to discuss the merits of this particular development without the Google factor and I do still think that giant wall of concrete is an unappealing feature in a residential neighbourhood.

(03-12-2019, 10:26 AM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]In your view, what counts as a "giant wall"? How big a garage would you have accepted?

In general I think that a plain wall (of any material that is largely homogenous in appearance) on my property line starts to feel somewhat imposing somewhere around 3m or so. I'm comfortable with 8 foot fences, but 10 exceeds some threshold and I'd almost certainly refer to a two storey fence with the adjective "giant", it's considerably different than what I'm used to. Imagining a 15m concrete wall instead of a fence is absolutely imposing and deeply disheartening. I recognize that's not what's actually in the proposal, but it's reasonable to me to start with that notion as the extreme worse case, and push the wall back until it feels better.

The building behind my house is a modern LCBO - around two storeys, simple yellow brick wall with some lights and no other adornment. It feels perfectly fine (and was built there after I moved in in a previously open field so is somewhat relevant) and starts somewhere around 10m from the other side of my fence. I'd definitely be comfortable with another storey but likely irritated if it went much beyond that.

The visual monotony really matters in this scenario. If there were a mural or interesting architecture it would ease my concerns. If it was three storeys, then there was another setback for the fourth and beyond that would help as well. There's something that really resonates in me about "human scale" and my understanding of that is somewhere around 4 storeys at the street, and then the tower set back some amount. I don't think a five storey parking garage is at human scale.

Too bad the developers didn't acquire the entire block. There's nothing there worth saving and the extra space would have enabled them to add some transitional (3-4 storeys) residential buildings around the perimeter of the site, with the tower and parking garage as proposed. And the neighbourhood could have gained a hard edge beyond which the SFHs could be preserved. Although personally, I'd allow six storeys anywhere in Mt Hope neighbourhood.