Looks like there was an old access from 33 Ave SW to 25 St SW, but that is now blocked off. To accommodate vehicle traffic from the new development a great option would be to re-open this access and extend 25St south to 33rd Ave. This would tie-in nicely to the new access for the Richmond Green redevelopment.
Looks like something out of Toronto. How did we go from raging about New Urbanism, a walkable mixed use small town, which relied too much on high disposable incomes to high rise residential fields with over 500 units per hectare in suburbia? More people than could afford it wanted to live in these New Urbanism communities. No one really chooses to live in a new mega complex of high rises in the middle of tract housing
Looks like something out of Toronto. How did we go from raging about New Urbanism, a walkable mixed use small town, which relied too much on high disposable incomes to high rise residential fields with over 500 units per hectare in suburbia? More people than could afford it wanted to live in these New Urbanism communities. No one really chooses to live in a new mega complex of high rises in the middle of tract housing
House prices for one thing - in the constrained inner SW most duplex are $1M nearby and there is zero apartment formats within the immediate area. Some of the older infill are a bit cheaper, and so are the most recent townhomes. Still - we are talking about 3,000+ / month mortgages in the area unless you already have substantial equity.
Related but from a different angle - there’s really a lack of options for rental and apartment formats.
Popular area, immediately close to the city centre. A single large site. Reasonably central to approx. 1 million jobs, including decent transit access.
Add all that up and I don’t see why you wouldn’t propose this kind of density here. I don’t think we will end up with 2,500 units and a bunch of towers, but a big boost of supply will be great.
House prices are definitely playing a part in what type of housing people are choosing. Calgary's dominant housing type build was heavily Single Family Homes for a long time, but has changed to apartment units being the dominant build lately. It's been trending this way for the past decade. (2023 numbers below) Calgary does pretty well in numbers for duplex and rowhome, but a lot of these are builds in new areas. We're not at a level of housing cost like Vancouver or Toronto, but we are a lesser reflection of that market, and the trend seems to be going that way.
I was having a look at MAX station walkable catchment areas and estimating the 2021 population within 400m and 800m of each stop; here's the stops on the Yellow Line:
And here's selected stops on all of the lines, with LRT stations outlined and the line-level average on the right:
The typical MAX stop has around 500 people living within a 400m walk; and a further 2000 or so within the 400-800m band. A top-of-the-range stop would have about double this; 1000 within a 400m walk and 4000 more within 800m. Note that there are 5 LRT stops with MAX service; they all have above-average totals, but not wildly so. MAX ridership is much lower than LRT, but that's not because the stops don't serve a walk-up market; it's because the service is much worse.
Here's line-level totals of population:
The reason I'm talking about MAX here is not because I didn't bother clicking the transit thread; it's to put into context what 2500 units would mean for a location like this right next to a MAX stop. At 1.67 people per unit, that would be around 4200 new people within 400m, when the best stops today have 1200. The 26th Ave stop would have more people within 400m than all but 2 of the other 57 stops have within 800m walk. This site plus 2200 people at Glenmore Landing (assuming 1300 units) would double the population within 400m of the entire yellow line; a 13 stop, $300 million capital project. Here's what these two projects would do (dark boxes in the figure below) -- it would even shift the overall average on the Yellow line noticeably.
Fine print, feel free to ignore:
This uses OpenStreetMap for the walking distance (which can miss small links, especially some pedestrian entrances into townhouse complexes) and block-level 2021 census data. This excludes CBD stops (as well as Chestermere stops on the Purple line). CBD-bound stops were selected (for Teal, I used the Westbrook bound ones, and for Orange, I used the ones that went towards Centre St.)
Individual stop totals are for that stop only; while the line-level numbers are for all stops combined. What I mean by this is that there are people who might be within 800m of multiple stops. The figure below shows the 17th Ave, 26th Ave and 33rd Ave stops on the Yellow line; the green areas are 400m walk and the yellow are within 800m. There are about 3400, 4700 and 3600 people within 800m of these stops respectively; adding these is 11,700 people. However, some people are within 800m of multiple stops; the total number of unique people within 800m of at least one of these stops (the red outline) is 9,500 people; this latter number is used for line-level calculations, but people are multiply-counted for individual stop reporting (since it's too much of a pain to go in and assign each person uniquely to their closest stop). This has an impact at the 400-800m interval (about 10% double counting on yellow, 20% on teal and 30% on orange and purple) but almost none at the 400m interval. People at the shared Yellow and Teal stops are counted for both lines.
The main difference is that, in Toronto, these types of projects are being built in places like Kennedy and the 401, where you've doomed residents to a 2h+ commute everyday and a 20 minute walk along a stroad to the nearest shopping mall.
By contrast, this development is only 3 stops on the BRT or a 15 min bike ride from downtown. A 10 minute walk to Marda Loop is not great, but with a new pedestrian bridge, it would be safer and more pleasant than walking along a stroad. Plus, 26th Ave has potential to become a commercial strip.
These clusters are being proposed everywhere in Toronto. Up at the 401 and at Dundas West and Main subway stations and everywhere in between. I don't see the desire to live in a cluster of towers up to 30 storeys high with obstructed views from the many towers and is a ten minute walk, bike or transit ride, to be somewhere once you reach the front door of the building.
In Toronto, Dundas West and Main are actually somewhere. They aren't set up for an influx of tens of thousand of new people and the proposed developments provide very little in community improvements except the thousand of units, essential amenities and, some new ground floor retail. No new employment.
My opinion on suburban towers has done a 180 since I first joined urbantoronto and dramatic height increases and built densities across Canada from 10 to 20 years ago has alot to do with it. I understand it's not going to be a popular one.
Got an email from RKHCA today re: a Grassroots Community Planning Workshop to “consolidate the community’s visions of what might be possible on the old Viscount Bennett site” and because “Neither the City nor the developer have been willing to organize a planning workshop for all parties to work together to find a way to develop the site that benefits everyone”.
The revised plan is so much better. There's community open space. Most of the residents on high floors will have views which is the point of living on a high floor outside the downtown core. The form of the towers, point towers on podiums, is an improvement over a wall of slabs. I'm hopeful further improvements will be made that may include more housing.
Housing is more than a stat. People are more than a stat.
TBH, I’m okay with new plan. If this was Westbrook I’d prefer the higher density, but 1250 units is still a massive boost for the location.
The reduction in units should be enough to keep the extra traffic in the neighbourhood down to a reasonable level, yet high enough density that it might help spur development of a proper bike lane on 26th.
The density proposed is unlikely to be built, and the 2500 unit count is very likely higher than will be built. It’s a hard CA and community to get this through, so I would take the same approach with the LOC as they did. Go in high and get whittled down to what you actually intend to build. I would imagine this will build out as basically all 6-story buildings, ~2.5 FAR blended across the total site area, likely 1500-1600 units.
