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185 King St S | 7 fl | Proposed
#16
Just realized that the first render there shows Allen Street VERY wrong. Not only are the LRT tracks on the road, it's with conflicting directions of travel...
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#17
(06-12-2018, 11:30 AM)KevinL Wrote: Just realized that the first render there shows Allen Street VERY wrong. Not only are the LRT tracks on the road, it's with conflicting directions of travel...

It's a bit weird, but not too wrong.

1) They show the rails embedded in asphalt instead of concrete.
2) The turn radius from Allen to Caroline is too tight.

The LRT does indeed go "the wrong way" on Allen.

(EDIT: Taking another look, I see that they've clearly got it sharing the lane with traffic, which is also hilariously wrong, given this is the counter-flow section)
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#18
(06-12-2018, 10:41 AM)Watdot Wrote:
(06-12-2018, 10:32 AM)panamaniac Wrote: The area will certainly be dense by K-W standards.  If they could only role back the clock on those townhouses ....


I think about that on a regular basis.

Just remember they replaced a gravel lot. But yeah, in the present context, it feels like maybe a podium building covering the entire former block, except for a park at one corner, with townhouse fronts on Park and at least one open-to-the-public through-corridor, and 2-3 needle towers on top, would have been a better development for that location. Who knows, maybe somebody will eventually buy out the townhouses and put in something else. Are they a condominium? It’s actually relatively easy to buy out a condominium — an 80% vote of the unit owners is sufficient to sell the entire complex. So presumably anybody who owns 80% can buy out the remaining owners.
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#19
They are freehold. Middle units recently have been selling for over $600k. I suppose someone could buy blocks of them over time. However, there are City streets involved such as Freemont. If there was to be a large project the City would have to sell off one or more of those streets... which is weird.
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#20
The good news is that since the city showed themselves quite comfortable selling off transportation corridors in that area, they should have no problem doing it again (Iron Horse Trail, though yes they did do a swap, but again, it was to make a parcel of land more easily developed).
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#21
(06-12-2018, 02:37 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Just remember they replaced a gravel lot.

Not a long-lived one. The whole block was part of the brewery until the '90s.

http://images.ourontario.ca/waterloo/250...ge/1499711
http://images.ourontario.ca/waterloo/65003/image/146416
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#22
(06-12-2018, 04:08 PM)kps Wrote:
(06-12-2018, 02:37 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Just remember they replaced a gravel lot.

Not a long-lived one. The whole block was part of the brewery until the '90s.

http://images.ourontario.ca/waterloo/250...ge/1499711

Thanks for the photo, and indeed I had forgotten how few years it was vacant. I arrived in 1993 so as far as I’m concerned the gravel lots had been there since time immemorial. In the context of the time though I think what we have is about the best that could have been expected.
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#23
(06-12-2018, 10:32 AM)panamaniac Wrote:
(06-12-2018, 10:29 AM)Watdot Wrote: "The area around the station has seen $215 million in new development, and another $135 million proposed."
Still the LRT isn't even running publicly!  This area is going to be top notch.  Happy with this development and the set back people have mentioned as there are a lot of large buildings in this area.

The area will certainly be dense by K-W standards.  If they could only role back the clock on those townhouses ....

On the other hand, those townhouse owners will be mobilizing now to stop the clock altogether and halt this development, too.
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#24
(06-12-2018, 06:11 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(06-12-2018, 10:32 AM)panamaniac Wrote: The area will certainly be dense by K-W standards.  If they could only role back the clock on those townhouses ....

On the other hand, those townhouse owners will be mobilizing now to stop the clock altogether and halt this development, too.

And indeed they already tried to stop the LRT. I remember being disappointed when the rep from the “Catalina Community” came out against the LRT at the public meeting in 2011. I had no idea what that was and was expecting an impassioned speech in favour from a representative of what I imagined might be some sort of group home or aid group. Instead it was the usual bogus talking points.
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#25
(06-12-2018, 06:11 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(06-12-2018, 10:32 AM)panamaniac Wrote: The area will certainly be dense by K-W standards.  If they could only role back the clock on those townhouses ....

On the other hand, those townhouse owners will be mobilizing now to stop the clock altogether and halt this development, too.

If so, not a chance, not a hope, not a prayer.
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#26
Quote:It feels like maybe a podium building covering the entire former block, except for a park at one corner, with townhouse fronts on Park and at least one open-to-the-public through-corridor, and 2-3 needle towers on top, would have been a better development for that location

I think a single podium would be way too big. Four seperate buildings, with pedestrian alleys where Fullerton and Freemont are and Norman extending to Caroline would be my preferred design.
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#27
Are this proposal and 345 King W the work of the same architect?
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#28
(06-13-2018, 11:12 AM)panamaniac Wrote: Are this proposal and 345 King W the work of the same architect?

345 is Diamond Schmitt Architects while this project mentions Gensler as a designer.
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#29
I noticed the parking ratios are really low for this building - 73 spaces for 97,000 sq ft.
That's lower than most other new developments I've seen in Downtown/Uptown.
By comparison, Perimeter's development at 345 King (Downtown) has 120 spaces for 120K sq ft plus a number of surface spots.

At least if you're an office tenant Uptown or Downtown, you can supplement on-site parking with parking around the core areas (at various surface lots/garages).
At King and Allen, there is no other parking around.
I wonder if the developer thinks that office tenants might be able to use surplus day parking in the condo buildings surrounding this site - but if that were the case, you'd think SunLife would take them - SunLife has a major scarcity of parking (I heard they bus people in from a couple off-site surface lots).

Over time, I think that office tenants will require less and less parking, but I don't think these requirements will change significantly in the next 5 years.
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#30
I would say there's just a complete lack of effort on the part of most employers to shift behaviour. I've seen many people toss around numbers of $50K to build a structured parking spot. What's the monthly cost of that, and how many employers offer an equivalent financial incentive for their employees to instead carpool, take transit, bike, or walk? The absolute best effort I've seen was $70/month for those who did not drive. I can't imagine you can buy much real estate or parking for $70/month, but it seems a bit nuts that we will reward drivers with a benefit in the hundreds of dollars per month of value, but will offer nothing to those who remove that cost from the business.
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