09-22-2020, 07:22 AM
How effective are the fences they have all along the Conestoga Pkwy at mitigating car noise? It's my understanding that noise-abatement is the primary purpose of installing them and anecdotally when running alongside the ones between Ottawa and Frederick, they seem to work fairly well, but I don't actually live next to them. Obviously they would do nothing for a high-rise building either.
Hasn't Smart Centres done similar redevelopments elsewhere? I seem to recall seeing a redevelopment something like this in Montreal that was right at a major highway interchange, though I'm not sure how successful it's been. I agree that it would be more ideal to push the intensification a bit further away from the highway toward the Cambridge Centre, but I guess one of the challenges with these sort of things is that there has to be some level of collaboration between landowners and the city. It doesn't do much good to promote intensification at the Cambridge Centre if Morguard isn't interested in redeveloping that property (although I seem to recall a proposal for intensification there in the past - was that driven by the city or the land owner?
My major concern with major projects like this is that the land owner is selling the up-zoning on the basis of a full redevelopment of the site, but realistically a redevelopment like that likely wouldn't happen except over a long period of time. It puts a lot of eggs in one basket and makes the whole project far more risky and if the city isn't very careful, what is actually delivered in the end may not be what was promised.
Hasn't Smart Centres done similar redevelopments elsewhere? I seem to recall seeing a redevelopment something like this in Montreal that was right at a major highway interchange, though I'm not sure how successful it's been. I agree that it would be more ideal to push the intensification a bit further away from the highway toward the Cambridge Centre, but I guess one of the challenges with these sort of things is that there has to be some level of collaboration between landowners and the city. It doesn't do much good to promote intensification at the Cambridge Centre if Morguard isn't interested in redeveloping that property (although I seem to recall a proposal for intensification there in the past - was that driven by the city or the land owner?
My major concern with major projects like this is that the land owner is selling the up-zoning on the basis of a full redevelopment of the site, but realistically a redevelopment like that likely wouldn't happen except over a long period of time. It puts a lot of eggs in one basket and makes the whole project far more risky and if the city isn't very careful, what is actually delivered in the end may not be what was promised.