1668 King Street East | 22+23 fl | Proposed

[ac3r]

[Updated thread as this has undergone a redesign.]

Vive Development along with MHBC Planning is proposing a series of two towers at 1668 King Street East (the location of the Schwaben Club).

Both towers are to be 24 & 25 floors, up from the original proposal of as the City of Kitchener permitted Vive Development a height increase. Tower A has been proposed to have 2'200sqm of retail space on the ground floor with 295 residential units above that. Tower B will only have residential, for a total of 321 units - 616 units in total. They are proposing 371 parking spaces both below grade and within 2 levels in the podium itself (access to these will be from King Street). Secure bicycle storage would be included. A small playground area would be located nearest Weber with a private amenity area on the 3rd floor of the tower nearest King. Entire floor area is 50474.7sqm with an FSR of 7.2. Both towers will have various degrees of setbacks to take into consideration shadows as well as offer a more transitory visual height increase as you continue to approach downtown. The aim was to be near transit - with two GRT bus routes beside the buildings, with the complex being a 15 minute walk from Borden Station.

Current design sketch:



Original design sketch:

Available supporting documents can be found on the City of Kitchener website: https://app2.kitchener.ca/AppDocs/OpenDa...633209.pdf

[westwardloo]

Interesting project. I like that you included this in the Suburbs section of the forum, when elevate condos somehow is in the urban forum haha. Personally I think the massing is a bit bulky. I would prefer slimmer towers. Also I don't like that they are the same height I would prefer a 20 and a 26fl tower. We will see what type of exterior cladding they are planning on. For the most part I like Vive's projects. Not Toronto or Montreal quality, but better than the student getto. I wonder if Vive owns any of the other plaza's in that neighbourhood? The context plan shows a couple 15 &18fl future projects.

[ac3r]

The tower footprints are fairly large indeed and I'm not sure how I feel about them either. But the setbacks on the upper floors, combined with the slight changes in the façade and the perpendicular placement of the towers themselves (which is mostly due to the constraints of the lot), should provide the impression of some visual dynamism so that they don't look too much like two hulking identical towers. The second sketch illustrates that with the different windows and variety of massing on different parts of the tower. One bonus about designing a tower in this manner is that it can let them squeeze in more units. A slimmer tower would need more height to compensate, but more height would likely not be easy to get approved in this area.

It's possible Vive might own or has plans for future work around here, as they clearly have a keen interest in the east end of downtown and seemingly, now, beyond downtown. They're an amazing local developer IMO. I've been keeping an eye on them and am tempted to seek employment there one day if they keep up their good work. Seems like a company that is truly invested in redeveloping this region in a very respectful way.

And yeah I've tried to get the mods to move the Elevate Condos thread to the Suburban section because it's nowhere near downtown, but they never seem to bother or notice haha. Maybe I'll PM one another day.

[Acitta]

The tower footprints are fairly large indeed and I'm not sure how I feel about them either. But the setbacks on the upper floors, combined with the slight changes in the façade and the perpendicular placement of the towers themselves (which is mostly due to the constraints of the lot), should provide the impression of some visual dynamism so that they don't look too much like two hulking identical towers. The second sketch illustrates that with the different windows and variety of massing on different parts of the tower. One bonus about designing a tower in this manner is that it can let them squeeze in more units. A slimmer tower would need more height to compensate, but more height would likely not be easy to get approved in this area.

It's possible Vive might own or has plans for future work around here, as they clearly have a keen interest in the east end of downtown and seemingly, now, beyond downtown. They're an amazing local developer IMO. I've been keeping an eye on them and am tempted to seek employment there one day if they keep up their good work. Seems like a company that is truly invested in redeveloping this region in a very respectful way.

And yeah I've tried to get the mods to move the Elevate Condos thread to the Suburban section because it's nowhere near downtown, but they never seem to bother or notice haha. Maybe I'll PM one another day.

There was a whole debate on the subject, which resulted in "Downtown" being changed to "Urban".

[tomh009]

I find it a bit surprising that Vive is developing this before the property that they have assembled around the Onward Manufacturing property. But, in any case, is Vive is very much upping their game.

Since you are poking the mod bear , I have a hard time viewing King St (or Weber St, for that matter) as "suburban", including this stretch. Is it "urban" (the other forum)? Moreso than suburban, in my opinion. Maybe it's really neither, but we don't have a third option available at this point in time.

[panamaniac]

This site is inside the expressway ...

[jamincan]

We should really reconsider the categories we use in this section, because this is just going to keep coming up over and over. Instead of making it easier to find a thread, the categories we have make it harder. (This is valid in other sections as well where categories overlap.) I would suggest changing the four categories to Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, and Townships. This is completely unambiguous and would serve people a lot better.

[ac3r]

We should really reconsider the categories we use in this section, because this is just going to keep coming up over and over. Instead of making it easier to find a thread, the categories we have make it harder. (This is valid in other sections as well where categories overlap.) I would suggest changing the four categories to Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, and Townships. This is completely unambiguous and would serve people a lot better.

Not a bad idea. Maybe have a Waterloo forum with subforums for Urban and Suburban, likewise for Kitchener and Cambridge.

They way it was explained to me now is ambiguous. King and Weber are apparently urban, even if it's a stretch of those roads that are 15-20km+ from what an urban planner would call urban (i.e. the urban core of a city centre; downtown, midtown; uptown). That doesn't make much sense to me because then suddenly Weber by Northfield could be considered urban, despite being a stone's throw away from farmland. Likewise, King East could be urban, even though it's by the Grand River).

I mean, what we have works okay since we are long time lurkers, but then you get projects like this where, for someone who works in urban planning very often, I would not consider this project or Elevate Condos as urban, hence why I put this here and wondered and Elevate is in Urban.

Nonetheless, this is a discussion that had apparently been had already and this thread is about a building project, so I don't want to detail it with semantic minutiae within the first few pages. Mods, feel free to move it where you feel suitable.

As for the project itself, it's nice to see more density outside the cores of the cities. The Schwaben Club will be missed (fond memories of going to punk, noise and experimental music shows there in my youth and taking lots of drugs lol) but it seems like it didn't get much use lately.

[tomh009]

We should really reconsider the categories we use in this section, because this is just going to keep coming up over and over. Instead of making it easier to find a thread, the categories we have make it harder. (This is valid in other sections as well where categories overlap.) I would suggest changing the four categories to Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, and Townships. This is completely unambiguous and would serve people a lot better.

Over here:
https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/...hp?tid=208&page=26

[Spokes]

I guess we need to have a separate discussion involving sub sections

Anyways. Pleasantly surprised by this project

[Lebronj23]

I guess we need to have a separate discussion involving sub sections

Anyways. Pleasantly surprised by this project

Agreed, I was about to make a forum for this in the urban section. I think we should group all the big boys in one thread. This one, virerra, Elevate etc

[GtwoK]

Sizing, for the curious

[Spokes]

Stands out. But that's not a bad thing

[ac3r]

Definitely. But it seems like both the City of Kitchener as well as developers are looking to densify Weber Street. There are a number of projects that are now proposed or currently under construction. And it makes sense as both roads act as a thoroughfare to get downtown. I do wonder about traffic issues because it's a busy road as it is (along with King), but if anything, this is one road I can see them using articulated buses in the future, likely on routes 7 and 8, which would really help with that.

[ac3r]

The NIMBYs have started their complaining phase: https://outline.com/RgB6uz