tele75
New Member
Personally, I think this is way out of scale for the location.
- Thread starter Daveography
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archited
Senior Member
I remember when the CN tower was way out of scale for the area that it occupies today. This is a City not a farming community; the downtown should grow appropriately to its function.
tele75
New Member
Just simply stating my opinion. I am in no way suggesting we curb growth. From an aesthetics POV, I think it's a bit much is all.
If the tower had a more central DT location, I think it would be great add. Just my two cents.
If the tower had a more central DT location, I think it would be great add. Just my two cents.
archited
Senior Member
I appreciate your opinion @tele75 and I was not trying to ride rough-shod over it. I was merely stating a counter opinion. When my family moved to Edmonton in 1948, its population was just under 127,000 -- for perspective, barely larger than Red Deer today. 69 years later the City has a metro population in excess of 1,300,000, a ten-fold+ increase over that period. To most of North America this kind of growth is rarely seen, save a few metro areas like Las Vegas and Edmonton's neighbor to the south. So the point I am trying to make is that what you see in Edmonton today is bound to radically change over the next generation -- a population that is projected to exceed 3 million by mid Century. Another trend has City cores being revitalized all across the world with urban densification focused on core areas. Edmonton is just beginning to explore this trend. While an 80 storey building may seem out of place for the moment, I expect that you will see many more of that height and greater announced over the next few years. And Edmonton Planning is specifically looking to build a 'Quarters' high-rise experience for that part of the City in a sector named "the Five Corners Quarter" -- check information contained in the website accessed by https://www.edmonton.ca/documents/Bylaw_15037_Q_ARP.pdf. When fully realized, "the Five Corners Quarter" would consist of all high-rise structures in the mixed-use meme. The 'Quarters Hotel and Residences' will be the first of those and like the CN tower before it, will be a precursor development that welcomes in many more high-rises of similar mixed use type. Now, the thing that I particularly like about this specific development is that it not only preserves the so-called 'urban balcony' that dead-ends the Quarters "Armature pedestrian way, it enhances it to a measure not typical for Edmonton parklands. In fact, the end result would see downtown access to four parks -- two new ones as components of the development and two existing ones in the river valley. I know that Toronto's condo king -- Brad Lamb -- is watching this development carefully, prepared to snap up adjacent land parcels in advance of a run on land prices in the area. This development alone has the ability to "make" the Five Corners Quarter, something the City would dearly love, especially after investing so heavily in public infrastructure in the area.
Das Ponto
Active Member
_MG_4451-Pano by Ryan Ponto, on FlickrLA for example is quite spread out in the downtown... with their tallest tower being 310m. Towers will go up and expand the downtown core for sure. I think the development on a whole would be cool to see especially since it's making a usable space of the valley side slope.
archited
Senior Member
Like Edmonton, LA's downtown is going through a high-rise construction boom right now with some 2 dozen super-tall buildings under construction. Downtown LA is becoming quite livable once again.
This is a pretty good case of ignorant nimbyism. I think there is a case to be made for nimbyism, but it doesn't apply in this case. Unfortunately in this case, I don't know if I've seen it this strong in Edmonton in a while. Kind of surprising given the nature of the project, yet I guess it is high profile in terms of height and location, even if people don't really know what the location is truly like - unusable space in its current form.
@westcoastjos The irony being that it's not in anyone's back yard - the whole purpose is to help bring more people to an area with so few right now. It's more NISEBY - Not In Someone Else's Back Yard. Or - particular to Edmonton - NANTRV: Not Anywhere Near The River Valley?
crisp
Active Member
I find it absurd that land is even considered part of the River Valley system.
I'm sure most of the people being noisy about the footbridge weren't from its yard either, but I digress.
Marcanadian
Moderator
Database has been updated with some better renderings.
Jarodsc17
Active Member
What do you think the chances are that the quarters district will look like that in 15 years?
@Jarodsc17 15? Not likely. 50 maybe. That amount of density will take a very long time to build out.
crisp
Active Member
Zero