archited
Senior Member
^ A little optimistic... but I am a huge fan of optimism!
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Dubas
Active Member
With all that hype leading up to Friday, I was hoping we would see some renderings and what the potential start date might be for construction
Hype is not exactly quantifiable… I said something was coming… and it did!
MakeYEGGreatAgain
New Member
So Katz is getting out of ICE District. In the meantime, Our friends to the south are getting another high end luxury hotel (Fairmont - Calgary). ICE District would have been a perfect location for another hotel. It's not a great sign IMHO.
husky
Active Member
They are literally in the process of beginning Phase 2 of Ice District.
Gronk!
Senior Member
Phase 2 of Ice District would be a perfect opportunity for another hotel.
I still believe a hotel can be erected on the SE corner of 101 St and 104 Ave.
Edmcowboy11
Senior Member
It may not be a hotel but 35 floors of residential sounds pretty good to me. This is what we need more and more in the downtown. Hopefully with this new tower the surrounding area again will see more businesses, services that are geared to people who live nearby. I'm pretty certain that City Market is very happy about this as that will eventually add a whole lot more customers who can simply go downstairs and buy groceries.
Garceyues
Active Member
As an Edmontonian who moved to Calgary for a few years, its hard to not be envious of some of the under construction projects and proposed builds going on in the downtown/beltline and adjacent areas. Truman in particular just keeps hitting it out of the park. 35 floors of residential sounds excellent to me, and I hope we can see further momentum with the next Falcon tower and the next phase of Stationlands.
bodsbods9090
Senior Member
When do you think we'll see a rendering?
archited
Senior Member
^ Dialog had a half-hearted design for a residential tower quite some time ago... hopefully there will be a new better effort. Personally, I doubt if there is even a design related to the new purchase but considering that the foundation work is all in place it should be able to be generated fairly quickly (within the next 3 months or so).
MakeYEGGreatAgain
New Member
I doubt it.....to me the current location is the perfect place to draw large conventions with all sorts of amenities.
Katz just bailed out on the project - they sold stantec tower, the never proceeded with the food court/retail. now they sell connect centre. missed opportunity now with so may owners in the district. You need one owner and one vision to make this happen. Phase 2 is a plan on paper right now.
bodsbods9090
Senior Member
I think Katz still owns the land for Phase 2, no?
Yeggy
Active Member
Yeggy
Active Member
We need both.
Yeggy
Active Member
OEG, or its development arm is. The province is dumping in money for utility upgrades for the land on top of the event centre.
northlands
Senior Member
I don't know if I would categorize it as Katz bailing on the project--it's a very common strategy in development to plan, build, stabilize tenancy, and sell/exit, even on multi-phase projects (MacLab is looking to do the same with The Parks). I think we're all disappointed in the public amenity package delivered, but consider that we already got the hardest part done: getting the buildings built. Despite the disinteresting landscape of banks and shelled spaces, there is still immense long term potential for when demand and financial underwriting makes sense to do build out those amenities.
In the mean time, it's pretty clear why we didn't get most of these amenities for anyone who spends time around downtown. Most evenings when I walked around downtown, it's still not uncommon to see more homeless folks and those bent-on-fent than average people. You cannot expect businesses to open up downtown purely out of their own charitable spirit or to satisfy people's unrealistic dreams of what should be there when the reality is day time foot traffic is mediocre, evening foot traffic sucks, and weekend foot traffic is even worse outside of events.
I mean hell, consider that City Centre was still a halfway decent mall when ICE District started construction and now it's a hollowed out zombie limping its way through receivership. That's just one indicator of how much things have changed in the past decade after (insert list of bad things hampering this development since inception that we've all read on this site 500 times).
In the mean time, it's pretty clear why we didn't get most of these amenities for anyone who spends time around downtown. Most evenings when I walked around downtown, it's still not uncommon to see more homeless folks and those bent-on-fent than average people. You cannot expect businesses to open up downtown purely out of their own charitable spirit or to satisfy people's unrealistic dreams of what should be there when the reality is day time foot traffic is mediocre, evening foot traffic sucks, and weekend foot traffic is even worse outside of events.
I mean hell, consider that City Centre was still a halfway decent mall when ICE District started construction and now it's a hollowed out zombie limping its way through receivership. That's just one indicator of how much things have changed in the past decade after (insert list of bad things hampering this development since inception that we've all read on this site 500 times).