[constance_chlore]

1,000 more people with eyes on the street, supporting the local grocery stores, visiting the park, checking out the galleries, riding the train, enjoying restaurants, walking to/from places instead of driving.

The architecture is crap, but the positive effects from this project are not trivial to those actually living in the area.

While I understand your perspective, I can't help but blame the current state of downtown on the "greatest" generation's need to destroy, rather than build cities. Tegler, Carnegie, Corona Hotel, CNR Station, Empire Theatre, Empire Block, The ERR. I could keep going.

It's easy to pick apart projects from behind a screen, but many of us have to live with the terrible consequences of urban renewal. I'm sick of looking at cracked asphalt and gravel lots.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong that this project could well be a net positive over maintaining the status quo until another developer comes along, but it's still embarrassing to have this stuff in our downtown and nobody likes to be reminded that we're still in the position of begging for scraps.

I'm clearly not an expert in the business or engineering side of development, but I think a lot of people feel (rightly or wrongly) that many of these designs could be improved a lot without being considerably more expensive to build, which accentuates the feeling that Edmonton developers are incompetent/tasteless and non-Edmonton developers consider us an afterthought. Again, this may or may not be true, but I think many people find it hard to shake the feeling.

 

[Tropical]

1,000 more people with eyes on the street, supporting the local grocery stores, visiting the park, checking out the galleries, riding the train, enjoying restaurants, walking to/from places instead of driving.

The architecture is crap, but the positive effects from this project are not trivial to those actually living in the area.

Exactly. It's the exact kind of housing that people need near these campuses and near the LRT. Yes, I wish that different design choices were made, but framing this as a net-negative simply ignores the most important outcome here: people who can live the lives that they want to and where they want to.

 

[Avenuer]

This is the final, approved design:

 

[Avenuer]

 

[biketime]

Obligatory before/after comparison. not much changes besides the color scheme of the upper panels.

 

[Kosy123]

Slightly bigger windows is a plus, we'll see how it looks when it's built. I still maintain I kinda like the north building.

 

[Tropical]

I honestly think this will be just fine.

 

[ADob]

It's marginally better. I think the windows are maybe a bigger part of it than the random colour stripes.

 

[northlands]

I actually like a lot of their small changes, except the vertical red accents. The accents themselves are fine just the colour looks so out of place and haphazardly slapped onto the design.

 

[TAS]

What's throwing me off a bit about the render is the ground floor - all those grey panels, which is actually glass, right?

 

[Canadian 001]

It went from Gawd Awful to Average,

Although the Fiber Cement panels ARE a Decent cladding Choice, So At least it's not Full Vinyl Siding

 

[Avenuer]

What's throwing me off a bit about the render is the ground floor - all those grey panels, which is actually glass, right?

View attachment 731067

Yup, it'll be all glass as they need to maintain the historic character of the building.

 

[Avenuer]

696 units won't be anything to sniff at - this project is singlehandedly removing an entire half block of surface parking and will have at least 696 new residents to Downtown once fully occupied.

 

[Canadian 001]

Went from a Prison to a College Dorm with the Redesign

 

[Gronk!]

Looks better. Balconies would be ideal but not a deal-breaker.