171 King St S Waterloo | 37 & 33 fl | Proposed

[ZEBuilder]

This is the location of the current Erb and Good Funeral Home on King St next to Circa 1877.

The project is being led by Urban Legend Developments, they have a tendency to partner with other developers particularly VanMar on projects, for example Urban Legend has been involved with the following VanMar projects: Station Park, 417 King, 10 Duke and 6 Regina. Urban Legend also partners with Kirkor for their designs, the rendering definitely appears to be Kirkor, it looks similar to some of the aforementioned projects.

The project itself in the current form is a 33 and 37 floor tower with a 5 floor podium, with a tower fronting King and Caroline respectively. This will inevitably need a OPA/ZBA to get approvals as the current bylaw only allows for buildings up to 81m, this is likely to be around 110-120m given a typical 3m floor to floor height with some higher podium floors which is pretty standard. That process will shed more light on the exact set up for commercial space, amenity space, parking and unit breakdown. Right now they are targeting 800 units in total. The way the podium looks in the renders makes it appear to be primarily parking, in this particular case it is out of the floodplain so it isn't floodplain related.

As I alluded to in the general thread there has already been geotech work completed on the site. Hence there is progress but given the tendency of projects in Uptown who knows how this one ultimately goes. In the current form it will be the tallest in Uptown until some other projects become public facing, if they ever do.

Rendering:
   

[westwardloo]

Great location, but feel like they could have incorporated the old funeral home better into the design. The render also makes those towers look too bulky for the size of the site. I hate that developers in this region only build rectangle buildings. Two (2) square buildings would look ok here, but two (2) rectangle buildings make seems like too much on this site. I think one (1) taller tower maybe 45-55 floor on a larger podium would look much better.

[mastermind]

Looks a bit bulky. Meh. Kinda cool though that two buildings in a row would be a new tower over an old building.

[ac3r]

Waterloo? Yeah...there's a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that this ever gets approved, let alone built.

[tomh009]

The project is being led by Urban Legend Developments, they have a tendency to partner with other developers particularly VanMar on projects, for example Urban Legend has been involved with the following VanMar projects: Station Park, 417 King, 10 Duke and 6 Regina.

Station Park is under construction but the other three are just proposals, right?

[ZEBuilder]

The project is being led by Urban Legend Developments, they have a tendency to partner with other developers particularly VanMar on projects, for example Urban Legend has been involved with the following VanMar projects: Station Park, 417 King, 10 Duke and 6 Regina.

Station Park is under construction but the other three are just proposals, right?

Correct, the Kitchener projects all have SPA. The Regina one only got ZBA/OPA approval from the OLT a couple of months ago iirc so it's further behind in terms of engineering work. With that said it's a smaller project so it could start sooner given less sales are required to get financing. For now though VanMar is focusing solely on getting the rest of Station Park built with building permits applied for the 4th tower.

[taylortbb]

The render also makes those towers look too bulky for the size of the site. I hate that developers in this region only build rectangle buildings.

That's not the developers, the City of Waterloo specifically requests slab buildings over slimmer towers to reduce height. Because the number one piece of community feedback about proposed buildings is "too tall".

[tomh009]

That explains the greater number of slabs in Waterloo as compared to Kitchener ...

[Momo26]

That's a lot of building in that space. I agree it just seems that they are keeping the funeral for the sake not destroying it...integrate it better. It doesn't have to be the inspiration for the towers...not like we must build two vertical coffins or anything...oh wait...

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

Definitely needs to integrate the funeral home better

[nms]

The funeral home building is a heritage building that since it was originally private home, and not a commercial or industrial structure, can't be easily repurposed for other uses like have been done elsewhere in the Region.

[bravado]

Can it be "repurposed" into being demolished so that a new building can have an honest design that actually respects anyone who has to live nearby?

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

Its nice, but not nice enought to keep and ruin the new highrise

[Momo26]

This love affair for heritage buildings needs to be revisited. There are some that were done well - Glove Box etc. And your retrofits - Communitech obv and the Kaufman lofts and Arrow Lofts are tasteful imo. (Do those even count or was that more of a solid choice to just gut make lofts vs heritage obligations?)

[bravado]

This came up in my chaotic feed of urbanist stuff - what if Heritage designations had a review timeline? Isn't it odd that buildings get designated forever - what if they were required to be "renewed" every x years? It seems way too powerful to give local councils the authority to just permanently partition off parts of the city, and I think we are seeing that (Toronto especially) cities are designating land faster than they are building anything new.