09-23-2020, 08:11 PM
(09-23-2020, 02:24 PM)panamaniac Wrote:(09-23-2020, 12:41 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: That being said, especially with the heritage component being so far back from the street, keeping it would give an outsized constraint on the overall development in this particular case. I would be quite surprised if it were retained.
On a different note, clearly there should be no parking minimum on this site. That close to an LRT stop the concept is absurd and offensive. I wonder how much parking the developers would like to provide? And what happens if they offer to replace a floor or two of parking with affordable housing?
I would have thought this would be a strong point of a creative proposal - use that space to create a small plaza, since a development of this size would be, one would hope, required to include public amenities and/or green space.
I agree with you as to site plan, and I think that it’s more unique and worthy of preservation than some people do. But either they would have to dig up only the two ends of the block, leaving the existing ground under the tower, or temporarily jack up the tower and support it on beams while the excavation happens underneath. This isn’t inconceivable — the proposal for John and King in Waterloo involves moving a heritage house — but I consider it relatively unlikely to happen.
Whether it should happen, I don’t really know enough about what is involved to make a judgement. I consider this particular feature to be interesting enough to think about and not just knock down blindly, but not interesting enough to go to enormous expense to save. But of course I’m not even sure what I mean by “enormous expense”.