General Urban Cambridge Updates and Rumours

[ac3r]

That's a super old concept by Greentown Developments. You can tell by the name in the architecture drawing page: they're no longer called Martin Simmons Architects.

Just the site is up for sale now. It would have been a nice project if it went ahead, but for some reason Greentown didn't do it. The building is actually really nice and contained some retail. Here's a better photo.

[Acitta]

Original, 160-year-old Grand River Hotel building to be retained
Indwell plans four storey addition on landmark property to accommodate 34 affordable housing units

[panamaniac]

Funny to think that such a decent 19th century building exists under that mess.  A nice save for Preston, although the "modern mansard" roof of the addition looks a bit unfortunate.

[bravado]

https://www.engagewr.ca/ainslie-street-improvements

Just a notice of an upcoming public meeting to discuss improvements to the pothole car sewer known as Ainslie St in Galt. Anything would be better than the current setup and I'm excited to see what they've come up with.

[bravado]

https://www.engagewr.ca/ainslie-street-improvements

Just a notice of an upcoming public meeting to discuss improvements to the pothole car sewer known as Ainslie St in Galt. Anything would be better than the current setup and I'm excited to see what they've come up with.

Happy to announce that the Region engineers in this little online call were saying all the right things about alternatives to driving and better uses of public space than on-street parking. Looks like Cambridge will be (hopefully) getting its first separated cycle tracks and raised crosswalks all along Ainslie.

Here's hoping the local miserable parking enthusiasts don't win the day and get the plans changed. It's going to be miserable to hear all the arguments about how left turns lanes are actually better for downtown Galt than space for actual humans.

[westwardloo]

I like the idea of bike lanes along the entire stretch of Ainslie and I hope that is the option that regional engineers pick. The pessimist in me thinks they will choose option 2 with the 36 parking spaces, because local business still don't understand that people that bike tend to spend more money on business then people that drive. So they will lobby council to make sure parking is included. 

Again I prefer the bike lanes to be both on the same side of the street. It feels safer (More separation from pedestrians and vehicle traffic), they look nicer, easy for winter maintenance and seems like the city is planned for everyone with infrastructure for vehicles, pedestrians and bikes. Example of vancouver below. 

https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2790133,...&entry=ttu

[bravado]

I like the idea of bike lanes along the entire stretch of Ainslie and I hope that is the option that regional engineers pick. The pessimist in me thinks they will choose option 2 with the 36 parking spaces, because local business still don't understand that people that bike tend to spend more money on business then people that drive. So they will lobby council to make sure parking is included. 

Again I prefer the bike lanes to be both on the same side of the street. It feels safer (More separation from pedestrians and vehicle traffic), they look nicer, easy for winter maintenance and seems like the city is planned for everyone with infrastructure for vehicles, pedestrians and bikes. Example of vancouver below. 

https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2790133,...&entry=ttu

I like the combo lanes as well, but those necessitate bike boxes and with the removal of left turn lanes at the very tight lighted intersections on Ainslie, I think a nice green bike box on top of that would make people too angry…

[danbrotherston]

I like the idea of bike lanes along the entire stretch of Ainslie and I hope that is the option that regional engineers pick. The pessimistrealist in me thinks they will choose option 2 with the 36 parking spaces, because local business still don't understand that people that bike tend to spend more money on business then people that drive. So they will lobby council to make sure parking is included. 

Again I prefer the bike lanes to be both on the same side of the street. It feels safer (More separation from pedestrians and vehicle traffic), they look nicer, easy for winter maintenance and seems like the city is planned for everyone with infrastructure for vehicles, pedestrians and bikes. Example of vancouver below. 

https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2790133,...&entry=ttu

Fixed that for you.

[rdaner]

Cambridge council chooses Ainslie Strret for LRT terminal.

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...ace35.html

[bravado]

Funny to think that such a decent 19th century building exists under that mess.  A nice save for Preston, although the "modern mansard" roof of the addition looks a bit unfortunate.

Was out and about in Preston today and had to get pictures of the surprising structure that was behind that old piece of crap facade.



[size=1][/size]

[ac3r]

There's a fair number of buildings like that scattered around Cambridge. I did a deep dive into them when researching the regional history to teach a class on heritage protection. So many were unfortunately demolished, but there are many out there that underwent an unfortunate...makeover.

I know a lot of people on this forum scoff at the idea of heritage preservation for old buildings, but this is why it is done. Whether or not the building has historical or architectural significance often doesn't matter, it's better to preserve that rather than knock it down or worse, let someone put up an ugly facade over the top.

I know in 50 years people will look back at photos of the of the building at 16-20 Queen and wonder why the fuck we allowed it to get destroyed just to build some shitty generic condo skyscraper on top of it. Or worse, that mess of a condo at 21 Weber/151 Ontario. One commenter made the argument that preserving that old house is irrelevant because it doesn't have any significance, nor does the fact it's old and made of brick make it worth keeping in its current state and that "cities aren't museums". Hell yes they are. The built history of the places we inhabit is extremely important to preserve. There's more than enough space and truly shitty buildings you can demolish to make something new. Knocking a beautiful old hall like the one on Queen or the house on Ontario to put up some extremely ugly condo is obscene. So is wrapping an old building in a terrible facade like this one...or that ridiculous kitsch fake castle we had downtown for the Oktoberfest office haha. Thankfully that is gone and the original building is undergoing a renovation that both preserves a lot of the original architecture but also modernizes it in a tasteful way.

[cherrypark]

Really great save of a historical building. Similarly still dismayed 16-20 Queen was effectively deleted when it seemed to have a lot of potential for performance entertainment or restaurant uses if they worked to keep the interior spaces somehow.

[Acitta]

Cambridge senior worries she'll have nowhere to go if council approves new housing project

[cherrypark]

It would be great if these articles covering the topic of displacement could spare a line or two to highlight that this is an issue that is not specific to any one development and simply has to be a change in laws to provide adequate alternatives. Displacement is absolutely a reality of increasing density, even if one may wish to see more brownfields used first.

Credit to Prof. Parker for highlighting why parking is a core issue in these low rise multi-res projects.

[ac3r]

It would be nice if we could just force these developers to offer people like her temporary residence in a new and convenient new apartment and then provide them with a unit in the new building when completed. Sadly it doesn't work that way, so should she get evicted she'll probably be quickly thrust into living in misery and insecurity.