General rating of this project

  • 1 Great

    Votes: 12 18.5%

  • 2 Good

    Votes: 43 66.2%

  • 3 So So

    Votes: 6 9.2%

  • 4 Not Very Good

    Votes: 3 4.6%

  • 5 Terrible

    Votes: 1 1.5%
  • Total voters
    65
Exactly. It's been better money and quicker sell in Calgary.

We'll see with this one. It's a small developer and most investors are steering away from Calgary right now.
 
MichaelS said:
All of the districts for the downtown core do allow for residential uses. For instance, the Oxford site next to this proposal is zoned CR20-C20/R20 Commercial - Residential Core. And as per the City's Land Use Bylaw, found at lub.calgary.ca, The CR20-C20/R20 designation is for high-rise, high-density development with a mix of commercial, residential and cultural uses within the Downtown.
Click to expand...

Sorry I meant more that the city should force new developments on any empty lots in the CBD to have residential included. I know that wouldn't work probably, but it sure would be nice
 
AJX said:
That makes sense to me. Just out of curiosity, why doesn't COC do that?
Click to expand...
They do... sort of. It's the same density bonuses that everybody gets for things that benefit public interest, the environment, etc.

However, I think FARs may be skewed against residential uses, because office floors are higher. Therefore, if the point of FAR limits is to limit building height and girth, residential buildings will always be shorter and narrower at the same limit. If the point of FAR limit is to minimize density of human beings, it misses the mark here too because there are fewer users/sqft in residential compared to office. Of course there are other constraints with the own pressures on building specs (residential needs window access and more plumbing, etc), but there are also a lot more externalities that can be overlooked too. For instance, if one goal of bonusing is to benefit the environment, a residential tower surrounded by offices might generate shorter commutes than if located elsewhere. There also could be more chances to share parking resources as sometimes occurs in TO and NYC. Some parking spots belong to the office M-F 9-5 and to the residence all other times until 8am, after 6pm, and weekend. This doesn't work for everybody, but it works for some. Really, I think it would be great if companies had incentives to reward employees for living close - like, if the developer could give discounts on residential properties to the employees of their commercial tenants - not sure what that might look like.

I vote for a 76-storey mixed use residential tower on the Imperial Oil site at 4th St & 6th Ave!
 
I'm down with the 76 storey mixed use tower! :)

The key maybe is that the city needs to build in more incentives for developers to do mixed use. It seems like a tough sell in Calgary where office space market is raging when times are good...and it's been that way for a while, thus the high ratio of office space in the core.
 
I'm not sure what incentives the city could do beside what they have with the bonusing. Maybe a straight up tax incentive? I wouldn't be the worst tax incentive ever, but may cause issues with land owners in other areas like the Beltline, etc...
 
Last I heard, construction is imminent on this one.
 
Totally. I think it was you, or someone else here, that said they wish this hotel would be put along 17th Ave so guests could see the real downtown Calgary... but we are never going to have a good CBD until we get a large number of these hotels and residential projects in the actual downtown. Our core has so much potential, and enough empty space to make it happen in a bit way.
 
There's a Herlad article describing the project.

Key take aways:

  • Two towers comprising two hotels.
  • Construction slated to start in March
  • 27 months estimated construction time (so June of 2019 completion)
  • 27th Floor rooftop bar and patio ;)
Other interesting stuff unrelated to the hotels in the article:

  • A DP was submitted for a 23 storey condo tower at 17th Ave. & First Street
  • DHL trippled their warehouse space in Calgary this year
 
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