As per my previous post, I don't find their reasons regarding views valid either and no one deciding on whether to allow the development will consider somebody's altered views. It's not worth giving it attention. Going all in on supporting a towering tower without even knowing what it looks like is an extreme pro development

I come from urbantoronto. Someone saying i don't care about a cheap spandrel tower is as painful as not being able to do much over a developer building a cheap spandrel tower
 
Hopefully, common sense gets elected next time and this national housing crisis turns a corner. Calgary has faired extremely well compared to most of Canada which is driving the record migration. We are not going build ourselves out of it as much as we prefer construction over addressing the high demand for new housing.

A tower will stand at least a hundred years. It will outlast this housing crisis and the next one. It should look good. It should have great interior layouts. It should integrate well in a neighbourhood. That is the topic of conversation for a great project. That becomes about density/ new population or at least it's better than what it replaced for a less than stellar one. Is it optimistism, glass is half full or, is it settling for just about anything with high rise construction being slow the last half decade? Calgary is on the verge of a high rise building boom. Bad design whether, architectural, interior layout, neighbourhood planning wise or, all three becomes much more recognizable than it does now.

This has nothing to do with CNIB as I haven't seen a design. It could be good or bad or both. It matters more as It's very tall.
 
maestro said:
Calgary has faired extremely well compared to most of Canada which is driving the record migration.
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Not sure I agree here, Calgary was in a better place before but I'd say it is comparatively worse. Toronto was expensive and now Toronto is expensive, Calgary was affordable and now Calgary is expensive.

Quantity does also tend to outweigh quality but I do agree with the prominence on the east side of the city centre area, this needs to look at least a little nice. The development will be what you see first from Deerfoot, Memorial, etc. But talk about extending the skyline... From 12 St SE to 15 St SW; 27-ish blocks of potential high-rises.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
Not sure I agree here, Calgary was in a better place before but I'd say it is comparatively worse. Toronto was expensive and now Toronto is expensive, Calgary was affordable and now Calgary is expensive.

Quantity does also tend to outweigh quality but I do agree with the prominence on the east side of the city centre area, this needs to look at least a little nice.
Click to expand...
I agree everything should be nice and have good fundamentals around design, most notably the ground floor. But this building is only a building - it won't (or at least shouldn't) be so prominent for long.

While Toronto is expensive for decades, we should be asking how did Toronto accommodate all it's growth and remain attractive and affordable for as long as it did. When the Toronto region was around Calgary's size today (about the mid 1950s) they were seeing population growth of 70,000+ a year for decades.

How did they keep up?
  • An absolute ton of sprawl (check - we are doing this).
  • An absolute ton of forgettable, but affordable, modernist apartment blocks, citywide, but clustered around transit and arterials. Hundreds of thousands of units (this is not like us at all).
It's not saying Toronto's approach was the best, but it did work for a while - their building boom 1950s - 1970s is the bedrock of their only (relatively) affordable housing stock.

Set some basic parameters to make sure any building hits the main, most important check-boxes from a design perspective - then everyone should get out of the way and allow for dozens of more buildings here and in many other places. A view of other tall buildings from a dog park isn't a good criteria to plan a city growing as fast as ours is.
 
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