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+--- Thread: Vertikal (471-481 King St E) | 23 & 19 fl | U/C (/showthread.php?tid=131)
RE: Drewlo Downtown project (formerly Fusion Homes) | 22 fl, 18 fl | Projected - jeffster - 02-09-2018
(02-09-2018, 03:23 PM)urbd Wrote:(02-09-2018, 11:35 AM)Spokes Wrote: Material choice will be critical to how this actually turns out looking. The image as is, not the prettiest. But the actual structure looks fantastic. Love that part.
What do you mean by 'actual' structure? the towers are just two generic slabs, they look like the student housing towers on King between Uni and Columbia.
They won't look at bad as the ghetto's in Waterloo.
I think when this goes up, it's going to look better than the renderings.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project (formerly Fusion Homes) | 22 fl, 18 fl | Projected - urbd - 02-09-2018
(02-09-2018, 03:30 PM)jeffster Wrote:(02-09-2018, 03:23 PM)urbd Wrote: What do you mean by 'actual' structure? the towers are just two generic slabs, they look like the student housing towers on King between Uni and Columbia.
They won't look at bad as the ghetto's in Waterloo.
I think when this goes up, it's going to look better than the renderings.
If it goes up as shown in the render, it will look just marginally better than the 'ghettos' (as you choose to refer to them) in Waterloo. What I think is that the final, approved design will be quite a bit different than what is shown in terms of colours and facades. Kitchener is known to be getting really strict with the design of tall buildings. Time will tell.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project (formerly Fusion Homes) | 22 fl, 18 fl | Projected - LesPio - 02-09-2018
Kitchener's east end will have a highrise view
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/kitchener-development-east-end-high-rise-1.4526481
Here's an interesting piece of unrelated information from the article.
Another application for a 33-storey mixed-use building has also been submitted by IN8 Developments Inc., for the corner of Duke and Frederick Street.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project (formerly Fusion Homes) | 22 fl, 18 fl | Projected - Section ThirtyOne - 02-09-2018
While Drewlo buildings will not win awards for architecture, they are well managed and kept up in great condition from what I understand. There are many a property management company that could learn a few things from them.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project (formerly Fusion Homes) | 22 fl, 18 fl | Projected - tomh009 - 02-11-2018
(02-09-2018, 03:57 PM)LesPio Wrote: Kitchener's east end will have a highrise view
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/kitchener-development-east-end-high-rise-1.4526481
Here's an interesting piece of unrelated information from the article.
Another application for a 33-storey mixed-use building has also been submitted by IN8 Developments Inc., for the corner of Duke and Frederick Street.
The IN8-related posts now moved to their own thread.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project (formerly Fusion Homes) | 22 fl, 18 fl | Projected - Spokes - 02-11-2018
(02-09-2018, 03:23 PM)urbd Wrote:(02-09-2018, 11:35 AM)Spokes Wrote: Material choice will be critical to how this actually turns out looking. The image as is, not the prettiest. But the actual structure looks fantastic. Love that part.
What do you mean by 'actual' structure? the towers are just two generic slabs, they look like the student housing towers on King between Uni and Columbia.
I mean the massing, podium height, towers, etc
RE: Drewlo Downtown project (formerly Fusion Homes) | 22 fl, 18 fl | Projected - Spokes - 02-11-2018
(02-09-2018, 09:32 PM)Section ThirtyOne Wrote: While Drewlo buildings will not win awards for architecture, they are well managed and kept up in great condition from what I understand. There are many a property management company that could learn a few things from them.
As a former resident of theirs, I agree completely!
RE: Drewlo Downtown project | 22 fl, 18 fl | Proposed - MidTowner - 02-12-2018
It's crazy to me that there would be 500 units, and not a single one larger than a two bedroom. If there were ten (two percent) or 5 (one percent), I would be surprised. But not a single one?
I realize there's not a lot of ability on the part of the city to dictate what types of units a developer should build on his own land, but it seems to me that we talk a lot about "affordable housing," and are not building almost any rental units that can accommodate families, especially near our cores.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project | 22 fl, 18 fl | Proposed - tomh009 - 02-12-2018
Yes, I think it would be good to have some three-bedroom units.
But, first, such units tend to be more challenging to fit into a apartment/condo building layout, where windows are typically only at one end of the unit, while most people want to have windows in all the bedrooms -- and the living room. If you now need four rooms on the outside wall, you end up with a very wide unit. Two bedroom + den units don't have as much of a problem as a den generally does not need a window (and, yes, some people do use dens as bedrooms).
Second, I will argue that a "family" can still live in a two-bedroom unit. Parents and one child clearly fit. Even parents and two children -- when I was growing up, sharing a bedroom with your sibling was the norm. For a lower-income family (you did say affordable housing), having two children sharing a reasonable-sized bedroom should not be automatically unacceptable. Or have living standards really gone up so much that this simply cannot be done any more in Canada? (Current demographics say the vast majority of Canadian families have one or two children, not more than that.)
Incidentally, I am encouraged that Drewlo is saying they will provide subsidized transit passes for residents. I think this is really an excellent move, both making transit more affordable and encouraging commuting to work by transit.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project | 22 fl, 18 fl | Proposed - MidTowner - 02-12-2018
That's a good point about the layout being relatively more challenging. And, it's not even that people "want" windows in a bedroom, it's a legal requirement. Three bedroom units can be put in corners. I don't know how many are appropriate, but it seems to me the proportion should be more than 0%.
Obviously dens are used as bedrooms in practice at least sometimes, but they can't be advertised that way.
I only mentioned affordable housing because activists seem to think government has a role in either providing it or incenting private providers to provide it (I don't disagree), but it doesn't seem to be a common belief that government has a role in incenting private providers to provide housing for certain types of families. If you are happy to have your children share a room, then you have plenty of options. If you want to rent a new apartment in which both your children (never mind the families who do have more than two) have a bedroom, well, that's not going to be available downtown, regardless how much you are willing to pay. I think that's a shame.
This is off-topic, but your point about people being increasingly unwilling to have children share a room is a good one. I would say that attitude can impact people who are just fine with the practice, though, if landlords and property managers enforce their own occupancy limits.
As an example, I was recently helping a friend search for an apartment for a family of five. In one case, a landlord told me that his 950 square foot bungalow on a small lot was not suitable for the family, and would be best for a couple because it was small, and the bedrooms small. That's illegal discrimination, of course, but I wasn't going to press the point too hard (he probably wouldn't be a good landlord to rent from). But I was surprised by that, since that house, when built, probably would have been viewed by most people as being perfectly appropriate for a family of that size.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project | 22 fl, 18 fl | Proposed - dubya - 02-12-2018
(02-12-2018, 08:22 AM)MidTowner Wrote: It's crazy to me that there would be 500 units, and not a single one larger than a two bedroom. If there were ten (two percent) or 5 (one percent), I would be surprised. But not a single one?
I realize there's not a lot of ability on the part of the city to dictate what types of units a developer should build on his own land, but it seems to me that we talk a lot about "affordable housing," and are not building almost any rental units that can accommodate families, especially near our cores.
The city of Toronto has a bedroom ratio minimum, requiring that every new development provide a good mix of unit types, including a minimum number of three bedroom units. They seem to have no issue making these demands of builders, why can't the cities here?
Also, to the separate point about challenges of designing a three bedroom into a high-rise, I would think absolutely any architect worth their time can overcome that challenge fairly easily. That's not an excuse.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project | 22 fl, 18 fl | Proposed - welltoldtales - 02-12-2018
(02-12-2018, 03:07 PM)dubya Wrote:(02-12-2018, 08:22 AM)MidTowner Wrote: It's crazy to me that there would be 500 units, and not a single one larger than a two bedroom. If there were ten (two percent) or 5 (one percent), I would be surprised. But not a single one?
I realize there's not a lot of ability on the part of the city to dictate what types of units a developer should build on his own land, but it seems to me that we talk a lot about "affordable housing," and are not building almost any rental units that can accommodate families, especially near our cores.
The city of Toronto has a bedroom ratio minimum, requiring that every new development provide a good mix of unit types, including a minimum number of three bedroom units. They seem to have no issue making these demands of builders, why can't the cities here?
Also, to the separate point about challenges of designing a three bedroom into a high-rise, I would think absolutely any architect worth their time can overcome that challenge fairly easily. That's not an excuse.
Lots of examples actually. In Hamilton a neighbourhood association pushed for and got a development project to incude more family and low income units. It can be done through zoning.
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/7591603-more-family-size-units-will-be-included-in-beasley-development/
RE: Drewlo Downtown project | 22 fl, 18 fl | Proposed - Viewfromthe42 - 02-12-2018
If the pressure is in the right direction. Things like K2 and Circa are examples of developments where there was a lot of local pressure, but it wiped the majority of multi-bedroom units out of these developments, to where they are (nearly) nonexistent, compared to reasonable starting points of inclusion in the developments.
RE: Drewlo Downtown project | 22 fl, 18 fl | Proposed - tomh009 - 02-12-2018
(02-12-2018, 03:07 PM)dubya Wrote: The city of Toronto has a bedroom ratio minimum, requiring that every new development provide a good mix of unit types, including a minimum number of three bedroom units. They seem to have no issue making these demands of builders, why can't the cities here?
I am curious about the bedroom ratios. I looked in the City of Toronto zoning documents:
https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/959a-City-Planning-Zoning-569_2013-Dec17-Part-1.pdf
I read through section 15 (residential apartment buildings) but I could not find any reference to a bedroom ratio minimum. Could you please point me to the bylaw or regulation for this minimum?
RE: Drewlo Downtown project | 22 fl, 18 fl | Proposed - Elmira Guy - 02-12-2018
The buildings at 130 and 140 Lincoln Rd in Waterloo have (four I believe) three-bedroom units on every one of the 10 floors.
It can be done.