Victoria and Park | 25, 36, 38 fl | Proposed

[danbrotherston]

I don't mean to say that this project will be majorly changed by that input. My bigger issue is the noise and attention from public input focuses on trivialities that aren't going to change (as others have said here; its too important and aligned with the city plan for it to not get approved), when I wish that the small amount of public change that can be affected was directed to more productive ends like:

- Engagement with the public realm/streetscape.
- Not having value engineering supplant reasonable architecture with concrete podium bricks in our downtown.
- Having more family oriented units (even if that is more a mid-density that needs policy incentive).
- Extracting some manner of support for affordable housing in the area (including where those NIMBYs would also oppose it).

It just makes the public process slow development for no particular upside. That's that part that is more frustrating to me than it necessarily having an outsized impact on what proceeds anyways. Maybe others have priorities in addition to the ones above that come to mind, though few end up noted atop a pile of "too tall" and "ownership feel/character".

In the processes I've participated in (Ottawa), the too tall and neighbourhood character stuff is not absent, but communities and developers have also been productively engaged on the incorporation of commericial space in residential towers, family-oriented (three bdrm street level) units, and design elements that improve the pedestrian experience.  For the "too tall" brigade, it can be an education process - in several cases, developers have provided renders of the hulking, flush to the sidewalk buildings they can build as of right in order to show the benefits of the taller, slimmer towers they've proposed.

In my experience this has never happened in KW, the only example of improving a development is Barra Castle where the neighbours correctly pointed out that homes on their street had porches not garages in front, and so the design the townhomes in the back were changed to put the garages in the rear and porches in front.

But in all other examples, the focus has been on killing a project, and has resulted in a significant reduction in units and an increase in parking.

I'm glad but also surprised that Ottawa might be different.