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(07-07-2023, 09:56 PM)ac3r Wrote: [ -> ]I filled it out. Tried to highlight the importance of transit and the need to consider the urban plan of the region in regards to increased population density to serve the most people going forward. I also emphasized the very neglected aspects of institutional architectural design, where creating an interior that is functional and logical to both staff as well as patients, but which also has a nice environment as it is proven that it has positive impacts on patients with neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric diseases, oncology patients, children and adolescents and so on. The current hospital is so weirdly outdated but not. You can be on one floor and some wings haven't been renovated beyond a new paint job since 1950 yet you turn the other way and it was clearly redesigned in 2000 or something. It's an uncomfortable in some areas. I've been in the ACE (Advanced Care for the Elderly or something) which are elderly people who are dementia or other debilitating disorders and damn it is such depressing wing. These are people who don't know what is going on and they're kept in a highly secured hallway that hasn't been touched since the 50s.
Anyway...maybe we'd get something like these two? Probably not but I can dream:
(Pictured is Khoo Teck Puat Hospital by RMJM in Singapore and Shenzhen Children's Hospital Science & Education Building in Shenzhen, China although this hospital is unironically more my style...and that sort of very minimalistic and contemporary look is shown to have a positive impact on patients, even though at first glance you may think it is super sterile and institutional looking heh.)
I hope you're right, but most days it seems like beauty is for other people.
(07-05-2023, 12:23 PM)Rainrider22 Wrote: [ -> ]I did it. I emphasized public transit. I noted that they expect the process to be complete by March 2024. Seems aggressive.
Picking the location seems to be the easiest part of the process, whereas getting the committed money, and enough money to not go through repeated scalings down and build an inadequate solution, is the hard part.
The Ottawa site is 15 hectares (~37 acres). It has a huge chunk of the site left as green space, next to an O-train station, and it has a helipad on top. If you could only choose one of those elements, which one do you think the new KW hospital will get? Or will it be none of the above?
That portion of the site is 15 hectares. The total site is larger.
Luisa D'Amato proposes locating the new hospital on the Auditorium property -- and relocating the Aud to be closer to downtown. A good location for the hospital in many ways: transit, highway access, large property size. The relocation of the Aud would require some further head-scratching, though.
https://www.therecord.com/opinion/column...455c1.html
From a timeline point of view, that could work, as the New Aud could well be open before the government is actually ready to put shovels in the ground for the hospital.
(07-15-2023, 01:59 PM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]Luisa D'Amato proposes locating the new hospital on the Auditorium property -- and relocating the Aud to be closer to downtown. A good location for the hospital in many ways: transit, highway access, large property size. The relocation of the Aud would require some further head-scratching, though.
https://www.therecord.com/opinion/column...455c1.html
From a timeline point of view, that could work, as the New Aud could well be open before the government is actually ready to put shovels in the ground for the hospital.
She's hardly the first to suggest it. Her estimate of 10 years seems wildly optimistic to me. If it were me, I'd be looking to put the new Aud in the area bounded by Charles/Ottawa/Schneiders Creek/Kent - good access to LRT, the expressway, and buses.
At some point, folks are also going to have to look at the costs - a new Auditorium (how big?) won't be cheap and the City/Region will be expected to make a big contribution to the cost of a new hospital (I assume fund raising has not yet started).
I wonder if she lurks this board because I'm pretty certain we are the ones who initially started discussing using the auditorium property many months ago. It is absolutely the most sensible location and I know GRH is already considering it, though negotiating the transfer of land or buying it from the City of Kitchener would cost a fortune and health care does not have very deep pockets in this crappy country.
Putting a new auditorium nearer to downtown would be hard though - if not outright impossible. There is very little land where you could realistically build an auditorium that could hold thousands of people and provide a shit ton of parking (because let's face it, most sports fans are suburbanites who own cars and no the LRT isn't going to change that). Some people on this forum have suggested the old terminal Charles Street but anyone suggesting that needs to fire up their brain. You couldn't fit 1/6th the current building on the Charles Street site (it's about 200 by 90 meters). The entire terminal plot is only 145 by 75 meters, so there is absolutely not enough room for an auditorium complex, the associated building facilities and parking.
There really isn't a single place you could move it while keeping it in the existing urban areas of the city - or close to downtown - unless the city magically came into possession of something like Westmount Golf & Country Club because it's absurdly large compared to, say, the city owned golf courts but there is basically zero chance they would sell that land. Or actually...it might be possible to build a decently sized auditorium/convention centre thing beside the Stirling Road bridge that goes over the tracks (The Metz property is beside it). Currently there are a number of industrial and commercial properties there as well as some now vacant lots where factories once stood. It's pretty close to downtown, near Mill Station (and if we run an LRT down Ottawa in the future, that's even more rapid transit connections), not too far from 2 separate Highway 8 on/off ramps and because it's vaguely in the Rockway PARTS area there will be a lot of high density development going up and with that lots of retail/food options for anyone visiting a game or whatever. It would require a parking structure to handle parking but the site itself ought to be large enough to hold an auditorium and that. There are really no other options to build a decently sized facility in the city besides those...unless you put it in the suburbs.
If the new Aud is just a replacement for thr Dom Cardillo Arena and the city builds ice pads at other locations in the community there may be more choices for a downtown site.
The manulife lot also would be a pretty good location if it ever becomes available.
Replacing Central Market would also be a decent sized lot.
Current auditorium property: 17.9 hectares (clearly far more than is needed for a single ice sheet and structured parking)
50 Ottawa S (self-storage): 1.4 ha
60 Ottawa S (MTD): 3.3 ha
61-97 Kent (MTD): 3.0 ha
70 Borden S (auto repair): 0.8 ha
30 Vernon (empty, next to the Metz): 2.0 ha
231 Madison S (derelict industrial): 1.3 ha
77 Wellington S (Ontario Seed): 3.5 ha
150 Strange (ex-Uniroyal parking lot): 1.6 ha
101 Glasgow (ex-Uniroyal): 5.8 ha
137 Glasgow: 9.3 ha
... and ...
15 Charles W (ex-GRT): 1.2 ha (including city-owned parking)
44 Gaukel (ex-post office): 0.76 ha
113 Charles W (ex-Manulife parking): 1.6 ha
The Gaukel/Charles properties, even combined, are only about 2 hectares (100m x 200m). The space next to the Metz would be about the same size but still tight.
However, the Ottawa/Kent/Borden properties would easily have sufficient space, given structured parking, and could maybe even accommodate additional ice pads. Ontario Seed similarly has lots of space, but I suspect this would be too expensive. But how about that 101 Glasgow property? Maybe some of the industrial buildings could even be incorporated into an arena design, assuming they are structurally sound.
Of course that space might even accommodate a hospital ...
(07-15-2023, 05:59 PM)ac3r Wrote: [ -> ]I wonder if she lurks this board because I'm pretty certain we are the ones who initially started discussing using the auditorium property many months ago. It is absolutely the most sensible location and I know GRH is already considering it, though negotiating the transfer of land or buying it from the City of Kitchener would cost a fortune and health care does not have very deep pockets in this crappy country.
Putting a new auditorium nearer to downtown would be hard though - if not outright impossible. There is very little land where you could realistically build an auditorium that could hold thousands of people and provide a shit ton of parking (because let's face it, most sports fans are suburbanites who own cars and no the LRT isn't going to change that). Some people on this forum have suggested the old terminal Charles Street but anyone suggesting that needs to fire up their brain. You couldn't fit 1/6th the current building on the Charles Street site (it's about 200 by 90 meters). The entire terminal plot is only 145 by 75 meters, so there is absolutely not enough room for an auditorium complex, the associated building facilities and parking.
There really isn't a single place you could move it while keeping it in the existing urban areas of the city - or close to downtown - unless the city magically came into possession of something like Westmount Golf & Country Club because it's absurdly large compared to, say, the city owned golf courts but there is basically zero chance they would sell that land. Or actually...it might be possible to build a decently sized auditorium/convention centre thing beside the Stirling Road bridge that goes over the tracks (The Metz property is beside it). Currently there are a number of industrial and commercial properties there as well as some now vacant lots where factories once stood. It's pretty close to downtown, near Mill Station (and if we run an LRT down Ottawa in the future, that's even more rapid transit connections), not too far from 2 separate Highway 8 on/off ramps and because it's vaguely in the Rockway PARTS area there will be a lot of high density development going up and with that lots of retail/food options for anyone visiting a game or whatever. It would require a parking structure to handle parking but the site itself ought to be large enough to hold an auditorium and that. There are really no other options to build a decently sized facility in the city besides those...unless you put it in the suburbs.
I'm sorry for continuing the off-topic Aud relocation topic in this thread, but this comment really made me
fire up my brain to look into the viability of having an arena located downtown in Kitchener.
First off, as has been reiterated ad-nauseam, the existing Charles Street location is sufficiently large enough fit a new arena, assuming parking is located off-site. I think that any Kitchener Rangers fan would love to have a venue like London's Budweiser Gardens, which itself would neatly fit on this site. Almost every modern venue constructed these days provides underground parking for the venue's logistical transport equipment, so there's no reason to assume Kitchener couldn't accommodate this, too. Additionally, Charles Street is plenty wide to accommodate full-sized transport trucks, so there would be zero issues moving hardware to and from the site.
This leaves parking as the only actual issue which could be argued. Exhibit A: London, a city which is just as car-dependent as Kitchener, manages to be the model for a successfully run OHL franchise with extremely limited on-site parking. Fans who drive to the games are expected to pay for parking at the nearby surface lots and walk to the arena. Kitchener shines in comparison, with it's density of parking garages located neatly within walking distance of the arena. Unfortunately for London, their bus system is fairly terrible - but it still provides an alternative for getting to games and concerts. Nonetheless, Bud gardens manages to constantly sell out their 10,000 seat arena. Speaking as someone who has attended games and concerts here in the past, the entire area adjacent to the arena is vibrant with people walking from their cars to the venue. I'm sure the local bars and restaurants experience increased traffic than they would if the arena wasn't there.
Exhibit B: Tim Horton's Field in Hamilton. A slightly different venue with a similar problem as the Charles Street Terminal: barely any on-site parking. This football stadium has an average per-game attendance of 21,461 despite only having 150 parking spaces. Hamilton manages this issue by providing park-and-ride shuttle bus service from many different areas in the city on game days. This situation is a little different, as an OHL arena is attended more frequently than football stadiums, but it does provide a clear local example of a city working around the logistical problem of parking.
The final nail in the coffin of this argument is that, while Hamilton and London manage to run model franchises without much surface parking, they're also managing without a rapid transit system stop directly on their doorstep! The issue of bringing suburban car drivers to a downtown arena isn't an issue of surface parking, it's an issue of logistics. I'm as cynical of the GRT as anyone, but I also recognize how equally-inept-public-transport cities like London and Hamilton manage just fine to run their venues.
To circle this back to the hospital relocation, the existing Aud is in desperate need of replacement in the medium-term future. I personally think the Aud property is the best suited for the new hospital, so I hope the City offers some insight in the near-term regarding the future of the Aud itself.
I think the Manulife property in DTk would fit a hospital nicely Fairly central. Or to.yoir point, make the Manulife property into an amazing arena and convention hotel complex witj condo towers.. Dream big
If you want to dream big, the Scotiabank Arena (née ACC) is about 6 hectares (15 acres). As various large towers are built in downtown Kitchener, that it going to limit what kind of civic expansion might be possible in the core. The topography and hilly bits also raises some challenges too.
Honestly, the old Schneider's plant location would have been great. It's 2 blocks away from the Mill St LRT stop, there are a couple bus lines that go right past it, and it's just a few minutes off the highway. It's a 27-acre property, so tons of space for a full-size arena, the smaller twin ice pads, a parking garage, and still have outdoor space for some basketball courts and a skatepark and a few residential towers with restaurants on the main floor that Aud visitors could patronize. (Don't get me wrong, we need all the homes that will be going into this property, but it was a massive single lot that we theoretically could have taken advantage of, and didn't).
The reason the Aud doesn't have much capacity because it wasn't built for balconies like Scotiabank Arena, so all the renovations did was make it wider to continue the same slope of seating. But a Hypothetical New Aud (HNA) with the same footprint but designed with balconies would hold at least 10k people.
This HNA would fit on the 47 Gaukel lot (owned by the City of Kitchener) with it's front doors just over the far sidewalk and touching the asphalt of the bus lanes.
https://i.ibb.co/SV3s0s8/the-aud-downtown-2.png
Put a lane like Hall's or Goudie's roughly where the pedestrian bridge of the terminal is.
On the east (right) side of the lane fronting on to Ontario, build a combined multi-use aboriginal and community centre and make it 5-6 stories tall. Plenty of room and would not stick out.
On the west (left) side, make a row-building like the Duke Food Block backing on to the lane and facing the hypothetical new Aud. The space between this and the HNA could be a combined park space & patio for the restuarants & bars, making them popular venues before and after games, concerts, etc… if not all the time.
I think we could match something like Halifax's Scotiabank Centre doing it this way.
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