[maestro]

I don't disagree that it would have a better feel... but Calgary needs both more housing and less sprawl so I'm not willing to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I'm suggesting a redistribution of density over the entire site. There wouldn't be any loss of housing.

 

[maestro]

I get that it’s “weird” in the sense of being very different scale than what is there previously - and midrises are a great design tool that can be cheaper and faster to build with benefits on the ground orientation, shadows etc. but tower/podium designs are fairly standard Canadian city templates, I’m sure it could work fine here, if thoughtfully implemented.

For this site I struggle with the NIMBY perspective, generally of course, but especially here. Who is actually impacted by any proposal, towers or not, on the site?

These are hardly being built in people’s backyards, with dozens or hundreds of metres from the nearest other property. I don’t see how anything will pass an impact test to truly be impacted by whatever is built here.

From design and build-out pacing there’s lots to debate - I’d prefer lower development, with faster build out times so we don’t see another site struggle to complete for a few decades at the whims of when or if tower construction is profitable. I would love to see a strong, truly attractive park-to-BRT pedestrian spine that evolves into an actual destination one-day. But that’s my opinion on site aesthetics, build out pacing and a rudimentary understanding of development economics - I don’t actually get a say on that apart from enjoyable debates with you all on this forum.

I just don’t get how any opponents will justify they have been impacted by this. I’m sure all the regular NIMBY tropes will apply, just this one is so far removed from if they were proposing a tower directly beside a house in the community, for example.

The tower on podium is the standard for development not for the reason that it's the ideal form of development for living. Vancouver does moderately well clustering towers on podiums in mixed use epicenters. Toronto, on the other hand, is creating a clusterfuck prioritizing housing as many people as possible near whatever available rail transit. Vancouver is starting to lose it with 70 storey tower clusters with 10 floors of underground parking in Metrotown or Brentwood. I just prefer a consistent medium rise form over towers on podium surrounding a big box street mall. Medium rises here concludes that Riocan will not come back with another 4 or 5 towers replacing the retail. The biggest pro for living high up in a suburban high rise are the views. More towers would block those views. A suburban location is unlikely to provide the level of service of a city centre and it's those nearby services that makes high rise living in a city centre an equal or better alternative to a house. It's not the apartments and elevators. This is in consideration that these towers are all over 30 storeys.

Riocan has well over 100,000 units planned in Toronto. They are a major player in creating this future Toronto. The retail would be proposed as 4 or 5 more towers. It's not unrealistic to think that here.

 

[KrisYYC]

Unlikely that the shadow of a 20 story building would even stretch EAST across 14th street to Haysboro

According to the city's shadow study there are times of the year where the shadows will stretch into Haysboro at certain times of the day

 

[Surrealplaces]

Do we know for sure the shadow studies were done with a 20 storey building? The shadows stretch a lot further than I would have expected, but at those times of year I guess it's not totally unexpected. The land use calls for buildings with a max height of 115m (about 34-36 storeys), maybe that was used for the shadow study?
Earlier they mentioned buildings as high as 20 storeys, but seem to want to sneak in some taller ones. They are aiming for 1248 units, which would require some height.

Maybe we'll see a compromise where they drop down the height from mid 30's down to low 20's.

 

[KrisYYC]

Here's a couple of screenshots taken from the design framework PDF that was posted by the city. Here's the link:

Glenmore Landing Notice of Motion

www.calgary.ca

 

[Beltline_B]

At 35 floors I can see shadowing hitting a few houses on the Haysboro side, but at 20 I can’t see shadowing being an issue.

 

[KrisYYC]

It's in the media now:

‘Ambitious’ new plans for Glenmore Landing area in SW Calgary - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

The owner of the Glenmore Landing Shopping Centre has plans to build residential towers and add over 1200 units to the shopping area.

globalnews.ca

 

[FCC1982]

^Yeah - just heard the story on the radio news. They put such a negative slant on it - something to the affect of:
“A favourite pastime of stopping for an ice cream after a bike around Glenmore Reservoir may be a thing of the past if an ambitious plan goes forward …

Do they not realize there are two 30 storey towers across the street to the south

 

[Olaf]

More information on this redevelopment has been posted on the Community Association's website based on a presentation given to them by the team behind this project on May 2nd. The post contains a lot of information, I will snip in some of the key bits here, along with the preliminary plans at this stage. Important to note there has not yet been any submission to The City, these are still conceptual, but it does seem like this project is moving forward.

Short-term (5-15 years) vision:
View attachment 476589

Long-term vision:
View attachment 476590

View attachment 476591
View attachment 476592

I don’t like this project at all. Sky rises , low income housing, more office and shopping centres….. There are lots of people who don’t agree with that .
People choose to live here because they like it as it is. Construction noise for the next 15 years??? I’m completely against this project.

 

[CBBarnett]

I don’t like this project at all. Sky rises , low income housing, more office and shopping centres….. There are lots of people who don’t agree with that .
People choose to live here because they like it as it is. Construction noise for the next 15 years??? I’m completely against this project.

You should purchase the site and then redevelop/keep it the same the way you like it then.

 

[gsunnyg]

I don’t like this project at all. Sky rises , low income housing, more office and shopping centres….. There are lots of people who don’t agree with that .
People choose to live here because they like it as it is. Construction noise for the next 15 years??? I’m completely against this project.

Part of living in a growing city is expecting new developments to occur. If you don't want things to change, you should live in a town or a satellite city. It's incredibly selfish to want to prevent development on a private lot just because you want "your neighbourhood" to look the same.

 

[Olaf]

Part of living in a growing city is expecting new developments to occur. If you don't want things to change, you should live in a town or a satellite city. It's incredibly selfish to want to prevent development on a private lot just because you want "your neighbourhood" to look the same.

You should go on one of those hot days to Sikome Lake , this will give you an idea how the area around our drinking water reserve will look in the future.

 

[Alex_YYC]

You should go on one of those hot days to Sikome Lake , this will give you an idea how the area around our drinking water reserve will look in the future.

That doesn’t make any sense. How would building more housing at Glenmore Landing affect our drinking water? It won’t have any affect whatsoever.

 

[Nimbus]

I don’t like this project at all. Sky rises , low income housing, more office and shopping centres….. There are lots of people who don’t agree with that .
People choose to live here because they like it as it is. Construction noise for the next 15 years??? I’m completely against this project.

Welcome to the forum, you're going to hate it here.

What's your problem with low income housing? You should really expand on that as I'm sure you'll come off completely reasonable and balanced.

 

[JWhite]

I don’t like this project at all. Sky rises , low income housing, more office and shopping centres….. There are lots of people who don’t agree with that .
People choose to live here because they like it as it is. Construction noise for the next 15 years??? I’m completely against this project.

Lots of people love the low density setup in these older communities and I get that, but they aren’t willing to pay extra tax to support that inefficient low density, instead relying on other higher density neighbourhoods to carry to burden. Having higher density projects scattered around older areas of the city helps you enjoy your low density lifestyle.
You should be happy these are going up.