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

[danbrotherston]

If developers and municipal staff did a better job of communicating the benefits of a new development to the community, that would go a long way towards gaining neighbourhood acceptance, particularly if a developer is proposing something that goes well beyond what a certain piece of property has been zoned for.  Every square inch of downtown Kitchener has been planned and discussed for decades.  Most people who live downtown have a reasonable expectation that things will change.  It's when a developer arrives with a plan to dramatically increase the density beyond what was already planned  with no apparent benefit for the nearby community, neighbours begin to ask questions. I do not buy the argument of, "Give the developers what they want and maybe we can convince them to throw a community benefit elsewhere". Developers should know their community and plan to become a part of it rather than appear to be maximizing their profit for the sake of themselves and real estate investors while those who will ultimately be living in the building and those in the surrounding area have to live with the consequences of any negative impacts.

What would make a project more palatable to me:
- ample sidewalk or plaza space around the building that would allow pedestrians to not feel as if they are squeezed between a glass/concrete/whatever wall and a high capacity road
- trees all along the sidewalk (this development is cutting down 51 trees of various maturity. I doubt that any trees of meaningful use are going to appear on site)
- onsite affordable housing (don't just give money to something that might be built elsewhere by someone else)
- family sized units, or a provision that single-occupancy units could be converted into larger units later (this would only work with rental buildings)
- meaningful contribution to accessible green space nearby (the downtown Kitchener parks are on the cusp of being overrun using Kitchener's own metrics once all of the current under construction and planned buildings are occupied)
- no massive wall of a parking podium that hulks over the groundfloor space and the street.

Things like this:
- We are going three stories taller because the building is narrower to allow for an outdoor gathering space or play structure
- We are going three stories taller so be able to plant more trees around the building for a pleasant pedestrian experience and to reduce the urban heat island effect
- We are going five stories taller because this building will have 35 affordable housing units onsite
- We are going five stories taller because we have moved the parking podium to the back (non street-facing) side of the building and there will be occupied residential or commercial units facing the street

If the neighbourhood is being asked to make trade-offs, then they should be able to expect some community benefit. How does this development contribute to the neighbourhood? (I ask rhetorically)

I mean, various developments have tried this...Mill St. had a small, but non-zero affordable housing component. It got scaled back and that affordable housing component was lost, NIMBYs (who pretend to care about affordable housing) declare it a win.

Queen St. was going to be a mid-priced rental building with strong design, it STILL got NIMBY pushback which resulted in the run down houses next to it being required to be retained, which scaled back the development and increased costs. STILL declared a win.

You don't want a massive parking podium, neither do I. I also want less traffic. Yet the NIMBYs demand more parking.

I think you folks are overly optimistic.

The problem is that many NIMBYs certainly the loudest ones in Vic Park, are not interested in improving their communities, they like their communities just the way they are, they don't want change of any kind, certainly not of the "more people live here" kind.