What do you think of this project?

  • Total voters
    39
Given the former use, i'm guessing a phase 3 will be required ie. digging it all out and bagging it for proper disposal.
 
To construct 4 Residential buildings (Multi-unit Housing for a total of 696 Dwellings) with a common underground parkade. The project includes the incorporation of the historic Massey Ferguson facades within the south building.
 
I remember younger me lurking on here years ago really looking forward to earlier proposals on this site, it's hard to be anything but very disappointed with the current rendition. Would like to see it not move forward at all honestly. What could have been... Does anyone have the earlier renders of the two tower proposal before these?
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oilcity98 said:
I remember younger me lurking on here years ago really looking forward to earlier proposals on this site, it's hard to be anything but very disappointed with the current rendition. Would like to see it not move forward at all honestly. What could have been... Does anyone have the earlier renders of the two tower proposal before these?View attachment 730343View attachment 730344
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I don’t think the 1000 people is worth it for the quality of slum they are building. We need better.
 
thommyjo said:
I don’t think the 1000 people is worth it for the quality of slum they are building. We need better.
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The quality won’t be that bad; the design could be better. It’s adequate for the type of housing it will offer. Easy to dwell on the what ifs - this will still be a net benefit to downtown and the area. Arguing otherwise just means you care about looks more than actually bringing people into the core.
 
inclusion said:
The quality won’t be that bad; the design could be better. It’s adequate for the type of housing it will offer. Easy to dwell on the what ifs - this will still be a net benefit to downtown and the area. Arguing otherwise just means you care about looks more than actually bringing people into the core.
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I suppose it could also be argued the ugly public library is a net benefit to downtown. Well between government and the private sector, we seem to be consistent with the ugly on the outside nice on the inside approach, so much so it could probably be called the Edmonton approach. Then we wonder why we have the negative image we do, compared to other cities our size.

We really don't need more crap.
 
There need to be higher standards. What world class city would allow that to become of a historic building in its core? The mentality definitely should not be to support building anything and everything as long as it nets more units, and if there was better regulation it would force developers to collectively up the bar instead of the race to the bottom in this city.
New builds will be around for generations. Yeah there are a lot of empty lots to fill in the core and maybe the post 2020 development has been slower in that region of the city for a lot of reasons but the answer is not to allow cheap garbage to go up just to see more development happen right now. Most cities wouldn't have that either. Do you think this is something we would see proposed today in downtown Toronto? Montreal? Vancouver? Calgary? Victoria? We have to stop accepting this or DT will not develop to its potential. Even if it means a transitory period of a few less projects.
We have seen developers do amazing things here and raise the bar, but the city needs to have a standard especially in the core.
 
oilcity98 said:
There need to be higher standards. What world class city would allow that to become of a historic building in its core? The mentality definitely should not be to support building anything and everything as long as it nets more units, and if there was better regulation it would force developers to collectively up the bar instead of the race to the bottom in this city.
New builds will be around for generations. Yeah there are a lot of empty lots to fill in the core and maybe the post 2020 development has been slower in that region of the city for a lot of reasons but the answer is not to allow cheap garbage to go up just to see more development happen right now. Most cities wouldn't have that either. Do you think this is something we would see proposed today in downtown Toronto? Montreal? Vancouver? Calgary? Victoria? We have to stop accepting this or DT will not develop to its potential. Even if it means a transitory period of a few less projects.
We have seen developers do amazing things here and raise the bar, but the city needs to have a standard especially in the core.
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The city does have design standards via EDC. If you don’t like the standards that exist, write your councillor or run for council yourself and advocate change. Yelling in an echo chamber on skyrise isn’t going to move the needle.
 
inclusion said:
The quality won’t be that bad; the design could be better. It’s adequate for the type of housing it will offer. Easy to dwell on the what ifs - this will still be a net benefit to downtown and the area. Arguing otherwise just means you care about looks more than actually bringing people into the core.
Click to expand...
inclusion said:
The city does have design standards via EDC. If you don’t like the standards that exist, write your councillor or run for council yourself and advocate change. Yelling in an echo chamber on skyrise isn’t going to move the needle.
Click to expand...

I understand the sentiment, and I agree in the end that providing bunch of new student housing Downtown (that is relatively affordable, hopefully) is a net positive. With that said, the design of this project is so utterly devoid of taste, style and class and is not acceptable for a prominent Downtown area. I also agree that Edmonton does need to up its standards at this point, however that will be an uphill battle given a) Policy direction which prioritizes quantity over quality of new housing (for good reasons, but still) and b) Edmonton's relatively cheap real estate market compounding with high construction costs and an isolated city location to prevent higher-quality architecture from penciling out for projects.

I wish there was a justifiable way for the City's development planners to actually enforce some basic good architectural design features for key locations in the city, e.g. window coverage, exterior colour palette, massing, street interaction and permeability.
 
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