Sarina confirmed tonight during the public information session that the red is brick. Other material is hardie.

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I question the need for the three ugly bollards at the crosswalk. There are other similar bollards on the street, but it seems like something the City is looking to get rid of at other intersections as part of the Main Streets Streetscape Masterplan. I feel like they could accomplish any safety requirements with a planter instead.
 
So boring and so good. Keep it up 33rd Ave!

The only thing I can think of is the gap between the previous Sarina development next door to the east creating a classic useless narrow maintenance liability between buildings. When combined with the other building's setback, you could almost fit a whole other unit (x 5 floors) in there.
 
CBBarnett said:
So boring and so good. Keep it up 33rd Ave!

The only thing I can think of is the gap between the previous Sarina development next door to the east creating a classic useless narrow maintenance liability between buildings. When combined with the other building's setback, you could almost fit a whole other unit (x 5 floors) in there.
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If they hadn’t incorporated a “courtyard” in Coco, there wouldn’t have been as much need to maintain such a big setback.
 
I like the way 33rd is shaping up with all of these multi-family projects lining the avenue. One thing that sucks is that duplexes are still going up along the avenue. I don't mind that they are duplexes, but they have the usual setback, and are creating an inconsistent street-scape.

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Surrealplaces said:
I like the way 33rd is shaping up with all of these multi-family projects lining the avenue. One thing that sucks is that duplexes are still going up along the avenue. I don't mind that they are duplexes, but they have the usual setback, and are creating an inconsistent street-scape.
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It's too bad that there was such a narrow focus on Marda Loop as the existing business district rather than 33 Ave SW in it's entirely as a primary, main street corridor before all this infill started happening 10 to 20 years ago. I am sure someone has more of the inside track on what happened here, but seems to me the focus for years on clustering development in a narrow area between 33 / 34 Ave west of 19th Street was the game plan for years and then results in this inconsistency.

Focusing exclusively on the business district in the western part of 33rd meant many infills a decade ago just off the main street and away from the business district were both too low of density and less pedestrian-oriented than they would have been if the focus was instead ensuring a consistent entire corridor optimized and for retail and transit-supportive mid-densities.

Now as the popularity and redevelopment pressures have remainder so high for so long, naturally there's increased pressure to redevelop outside of the original, very narrow focus area. Only problem is that the compromises from 10 to 20 years ago meant the planning is inconsistent and yields inconsistent outcomes. Really awkward to redevelop 10 year old $1.5M homes a block from the main retail cluster (probably should have been medium density or mixed use from the beginning).

The land use map below illustrates what I mean. The south side of 34 Ave is fine but apart from the multi-family sites right on 33rd, some of the lowest density/highest priced infills are immediately adjacent to the retail cluster and the transit route. And more continue to be built among the more appropriate mixed use multi-family and row house developments. This is the opposite of what a pedestrian-centric retail corridor requires. The whole area circled in red on the map should be higher intensities/mixed use:

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It's probably a good case study in growth for popular areas and the limits and strengths of planning. Community opposition to my corridor approach succeeded in removing the areas north of 33rd and east of 19th Street from the main area to expect growth. But growth pressure came anyways, so now that growth is inconsistent, awkward and more expensive. If 10 to 20 years ago the whole area was thought of comprehensively as a corridor the results might have been different.

Inconsistency aside - 33rd is evolving to be light years better than the bizarreness that is 14 Street SW nearby between Upper Mount Royal and South Calgary. A perfect corridor for retail and density and it's completely stunted because zero redevelopment and intensification can exist on one side of the road.
 
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