HamiltonPlanning
Active Member
You're correct, it is still there! One of my favourite smoke stacks in the city - you get an excellent view of it looking south on Rosslyn Ave.
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camp_tor
New Member
A better example would be Toronto's Queen West back in the 80's and 90's. When it was still a sketchy place to be so the rents were cheap. As a result; many artists and small fashion businesses set up shop and it developed into the best part of the city live, work and play.
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Chronamut
Senior Member
Yeah I live on lawrence by rosedale so I can see if If i go hiking along the escarpment trail or just.. along lawrence
I love the feeling of james st - with a lot of the new builds I feel like I have to walk by them forever just to get to some tiny business that takes up a tiny portion of the huge building - with james every area is a business. It's one thing I worry about with this build.
Wigs
Active Member
You're saying the sense of scale of new builds is too large for a pedestrian oriented environment?
I recall walking byCobalt The King William Urban Rentals when it was just finishing up and it didn't seem that bad. But those towers were smartly built perpendicular to each other..and the podium has differing materials to break up the building from being one long wall to good effect.
I recall walking by
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Chris R.
Senior Member
I think speaking to the total walking distance to get past multiple businesses which is fair. Many new builds have incredibly shallow units. The Brain bar for example is like 18' across, vs many new buildings have units that are hundreds of feet long, especially in the suburbs where whatever parking is required by law.
I'm not too worried about this one though. Core Urban hasn't failed once yet, and appears to care a lot about making the city and streetscapes better. When I've spoken to Steve about his developments, it's clear he has a love for the city so we're in good hands.
Chronamut
Senior Member
Unless they have changed the internal layout for this one.. yes.
If we look at the original floorplans it was actually one of the things the original approval panel pointed out - "office" on a street that is meant for businesses, mainly restaurants is a bit odd, and the barton side is half parking entrance. I mean it's nowhere near as bad as some of them but still. I get that "office" building is the existing building which means this new building really only has one squished commercial area and one regular commercial area only on the james st side.
The King William Urban Rentals was imo done more smartly, even if we had our.. various complaints about it - it was still done in a way that had multiple potential restaurant openings across from other restaurants - the side facing west shows how the building across from it can just feel like an intimidating wall without multiple entrance ports. Basically the new builds don't do enough to encourage a walk and browse atmosphere - its usually just a huge amt of lobby space then a wall then maybe a small coffee shop or something.. or in vranich's case.. just an empty first floor lol..
But yes what Chris said too - either too wide and you have to take forever to walk by it, aka not split up into shorter deeper units, or just.. missing entirely.. look at the mcmaster student residences block - you have to basically walk by that entire block - anything past the ellen faircloud building is just horrible for that - completely unwalkable in that browsable way that the old core is.
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