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General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - Printable Version

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RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - timc - 06-07-2016

Does that mean that the minimum bicycle parking is more than the minimum vehicle parking?


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - Viewfromthe42 - 06-07-2016

Wait, we need *more* parking around rapid transit stations than elsewhere in the urban growth centre? I don't find 0.9 or 0.95 to be low enough as is, but that being closer to transit requires you to own *more* parking is nuts.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - tomh009 - 06-07-2016

Well, kind of. The minimum is slightly higher at PARTS than in the central downtown core. Not unreasonable, I think the core should be the lowest requirement there is.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - mpd618 - 06-07-2016

I'm guessing Two Goblets restaurant is moving soon from Weber Street (to Ontario Street) because Weber/College is a pretty good redevelopment opportunity.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - Viewfromthe42 - 06-08-2016

(06-07-2016, 04:33 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Well, kind of.  The minimum is slightly higher at PARTS than in the central downtown core.  Not unreasonable, I think the core should be the lowest requirement there is.

Which would take precedence in the core though? There's not much of Downtown that doesn't fall under PARTS, and I would hope that in that area we don't see higher minimums.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - tomh009 - 06-08-2016

(06-08-2016, 08:22 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote:
(06-07-2016, 04:33 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Well, kind of.  The minimum is slightly higher at PARTS than in the central downtown core.  Not unreasonable, I think the core should be the lowest requirement there is.

Which would take precedence in the core though? There's not much of Downtown that doesn't fall under PARTS, and I would hope that in that area we don't see higher minimums.

If I interpreted the document correctly, that's the UCG zoning rather than the PARTS zoning (even if close to a station), so next to an ION stop downtown would require 0.9 spaces/unit.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - Viewfromthe42 - 06-08-2016

And as a baseline, what's the normal, anywhere-but-PARTS parking minimum? Should tell us how much (or little) Kitchener thinks transit encourages change of behaviour (or encourages different kinds of people to move to/stay in the area).


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - tomh009 - 06-08-2016

As far as I can tell, the zoning outside of UCG and PARTS is not changing, so the parking minimum depends on the specific zoning for the property (and is the same as before). For larger residential buildings, 1.5 is fairly typical.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - panamaniac - 06-08-2016

The e-Record is reporting that the Budds buiding has been sold. That's much more quickly that I would have anticipated. I wonder if that means just the building housing the old Budds department store, or any of the neighbouring buildings - I've often wondered whether the Budd brothers owned the structure down as far as Petsches? It's hard with the old Downtown building sometimes to know where one stops and where another one starts. Whatever, I glad for the Budd brothers - they were true Downtown stalwarts so I'm happy if they are happy with the sale.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - taylortbb - 06-09-2016

(06-08-2016, 06:40 PM)panamaniac Wrote:  I wonder if that means just the building housing the old Budds department store, or any of the neighbouring buildings - I've often wondered whether the Budd brothers owned the structure down as far as Petsches?  It's hard with the old Downtown building sometimes to know where one stops and where another one starts. 

Doesn't look like it. Budd's was 165, and you can see there's three separate properties to the east of Budds before getting to the open space for Bobby O'Brien's patio. Probably one for the tripcentral.ca/Double Double building, one for DNK Pho, and one for Petsche's.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - panamaniac - 06-09-2016

OK, good to know.  The Record article and the quotes from Howie Budd seem to want to hint at a new retail use for the building, although I may be reading too much into it.


http://www.therecord.com/news-story/6713898-budds-building-in-downtown-kitchener-sold/


Edit:  570 News says the purchaser of the building is Jay Shah.  High tech, I believe, no?


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - Viewfromthe42 - 06-09-2016

Was at the Tall Building Urban Design Guidelines meeting last night (I'm going to start calling it The BUDGie, for the acronym, and because our ability to accommodate tall buildings and to do them well is a canary-in-the-coalmine of sorts for our urban fabric.

After the roundtables, where people had voted on 8 facets of The BUDGie, and discussed the table's top 3 in detail, the main areas of concern were around public and private open spaces, massing and scale, fitting into local context, architecture, and safety. One table's consensus was that tall buildings should start with boulevard sidewalks, then greenway buffer, then public park, and if you could actually fit a building onto the remaining parcel surrounded by this massive buffer, well it didn't really need to be more than 4 storeys, did it? (note: The BUDGie concerns only structures of 9+ storeys) I was also a bit shocked that a resident living across from Google felt that 1Vic was too tall for the area, and even Google's expansion was a bit massive, even if the preservation of much old building was appreciated. There was some nodding when I mentioned that with GRT/ION/GO Bus/GO Train/Greyhound/VIA/Regional Roads with highway access/potential high-speed-rail, King and Victoria should be the densest, tallest place in the region. Still, I was left with the feeling that a lot of people in the area have the mindset of wanting to be close to the amenities of downtown, but don't want neighbours that don't live the same as them (fake-itecture was something the developers and architects at my table lamented, but many other tables seemed to champion).

Online information can be found here and comments submitted to Dayna.Edwards@kitchener.ca, and further consultations will happen this year, with the initial draft coming in July.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - panamaniac - 06-09-2016

(06-09-2016, 09:12 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: Was at the Tall Building Urban Design Guidelines meeting last night (I'm going to start calling it The BUDGie, for the acronym, and because our ability to accommodate tall buildings and to do them well is a canary-in-the-coalmine of sorts for our urban fabric.

After the roundtables, where people had voted on 8 facets of The BUDGie, and discussed the table's top 3 in detail, the main areas of concern were around public and private open spaces, massing and scale, fitting into local context, architecture, and safety. One table's consensus was that tall buildings should start with boulevard sidewalks, then greenway buffer, then public park, and if you could actually fit a building onto the remaining parcel surrounded by this massive buffer, well it didn't really need to be more than 4 storeys, did it? (note: The BUDGie concerns only structures of 9+ storeys) I was also a bit shocked that a resident living across from Google felt that 1Vic was too tall for the area, and even Google's expansion was a bit massive, even if the preservation of much old building was appreciated. There was some nodding when I mentioned that with GRT/IONy the /GO Bus/GO Train/Greyhound/VIA/Regional Roads with highway access/potential high-speed-rail, King and Victoria should be the densest, tallest place in the region. Still, I was left with the feeling that a lot of people in the area have the mindset of wanting to be close to the amenities of downtown, but don't want neighbours that don't live the same as them (fake-itecture was something the developers and architects at my table lamented, but many other tables seemed to champion).

Online information can be found here and comments submitted to Dayna.Edwards@kitchener.ca, and further consultations will happen this year, with the initial draft coming in July.



I'm so disappointed that I didn't know that this meeting was taking place.  Your post and the article in the Record make the meeting sound like the first salvo in a coming battle between developers and the old SFH neighbourhoods of the core.  I hope I'm wrong about that.

By the way, what is "fake-itchture"?


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - Viewfromthe42 - 06-09-2016

(06-09-2016, 09:34 AM)panamaniac Wrote:
(06-09-2016, 09:12 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: Still, I was left with the feeling that a lot of people in the area have the mindset of wanting to be close to the amenities of downtown, but don't want neighbours that don't live the same as them (fake-itecture was something the developers and architects at my table lamented, but many other tables seemed to champion).



I'm so disappointed that I didn't know that this meeting was taking place.  Your post and the article in the Record make the meeting sound like the first salvo in a coming battle between developers and the old SFH neighbourhoods of the core.  I hope I'm wrong about that.

By the way, what is "fake-itchture"?

fake-itecture is when a building is designed to "fit into the existing neighbourhood" and goes out of its way to poorly imitate what its neighbours look like. While lots of heritage neighbourhoods will tell you all about how it's great that each house has its own story and personality, when it comes to a tall building, it often seems that no one wants it to have any identity or individuality at all, which is a bit weird.


RE: General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours - Markster - 06-09-2016

Historicism?