General Rating for this project

  • Great

    Votes: 2 3.2%

  • Very Good

    Votes: 4 6.3%

  • Good

    Votes: 28 44.4%

  • So So

    Votes: 7 11.1%

  • Not Very Good

    Votes: 10 15.9%

  • Terrible

    Votes: 12 19.0%
  • Total voters
    63
1875 said:
this doesnt make my blood boil as much as some of the train wrecks sprinkled around the city. actually considering its visible from everywhere i expected worse.

View attachment 252381
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The foreground of this picture is a good reminder this project *is* a huge upgrade from the 1970s - 1990s car-oriented beige motel scene that it's replacing. It's failures are more:
  • Location (a great boost of people/vibrancy generating student density, mostly wasted by being surrounded by two highways and little to walk comfortably walk to)
  • Conflicting or non-existent area plans to support development (the degree in which the area should be converted to be walkable and urban supporting towers like this hasn't been detailed in any material budget, plan or policy)
  • Poor ground-level interface (see the other two points for why)
If this had built this exact same tower in any of the blue areas instead of the red one it would have been a much better contributor to vibrancy, TOD or both. Also acceptable if they cut the building into 3 x 10 storey towers (or 6 x 5 storey ones) and finished about half of the Motel Village's redevelopment in one swoop. Any of those alternatives might not solve all the design issues people have - but at least there would have been encouragement to integrate better into the surroundings and to the market this tower is specifically trying to serve - student housing near a post-secondary institution.
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1592512936434.png
 
CBBarnett said:
The foreground of this picture is a good reminder this project *is* a huge upgrade from the 1970s - 1990s car-oriented beige motel scene that it's replacing. It's failures are more:
  • Location (a great boost of people/vibrancy generating student density, mostly wasted by being surrounded by two highways and little to walk comfortably walk to)
  • Conflicting or non-existent area plans to support development (the degree in which the area should be converted to be walkable and urban supporting towers like this hasn't been detailed in any material budget, plan or policy)
  • Poor ground-level interface (see the other two points for why)
Click to expand...
Your second bullet point isn't actually true (albeit, the quality of the plans and appropriateness of the investments could be argued). The Banff Trail Station ARP does call for a complete road network within the community, however it did not really define at the time what the cross-sections would be or how it would be implemented over private property. There was also a clause in it that capped development until the ramp connecting WB 16th Avenue to NB Crowchild Trail was constructed. This project would push up against that cap, so the City budgeted dollars to input that ramp and a few other local upgrades to start to implement the road network as envisioned in the ARP:
www.calgary.ca

Banff Trail Area Improvements

www.calgary.ca www.calgary.ca

1592537353459.png
 
MichaelS said:
Your second bullet point isn't actually true (albeit, the quality of the plans and appropriateness of the investments could be argued). The Banff Trail Station ARP does call for a complete road network within the community, however it did not really define at the time what the cross-sections would be or how it would be implemented over private property. There was also a clause in it that capped development until the ramp connecting WB 16th Avenue to NB Crowchild Trail was constructed. This project would push up against that cap, so the City budgeted dollars to input that ramp and a few other local upgrades to start to implement the road network as envisioned in the ARP:
www.calgary.ca

Banff Trail Area Improvements

www.calgary.ca www.calgary.ca

View attachment 252455
Click to expand...
This is good context, but also is my point. If the plan doesn't define the cross-sections (or the cross-sections are defined to be the wrong answer and car-focused) and consecutive city budgets failed to devote any resources to sort it out the challenges regarding private property or converting a suburban area to a more inner city one that is more pedestrian etc., it was close to inevitable we ended up in a situation where we failed to do 1 or 2 things:
  • promote good development
  • prevent bad development
Again, our weird interventions that cap development predicating on millions of dollars of car infrastructure (the ramp you speak of ) is exactly opposite of the type of mechanisms we need to encourage redevelopment and a successful transition from a definitively suburban place to an urban one.
 
O-tac said:
I still don’t understand why the bottom half of the lefthand corner has no windows.
Click to expand...
Those are specifically designated for those taking computer science at U of C.;)
 
I don't mind offset placement of windows, but here is how to do it right. Keep the cladding and window colour the same and it can look great.
UofC-sm.jpg
 
It’s soooooooo bad. OMG What a piece of 💩. And to be the most prominent building in the area. You can’t hide from it.
 
The bright white building surrounded by dirt and cement reminds me of the middle east.
 
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