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15 unit infill going in at 12th St. and 20th Ave., Northwest
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I'm loving what's happening on 19th St.
I wish there was some way to improve the south side of Kensington Rd, to improve the strip between Kensington Rd and Westmount where most properties just have ugly fences facing Kensington Rd.
Some sort of multifamily with underground parking with like 6 stories with ground floor retail on Kensington and 3 stories of residential only facing Westmount could be interesting.
 
I'm loving what's happening on 19th St.
I wish there was some way to improve the south side of Kensington Rd, to improve the strip between Kensington Rd and Westmount where most properties just have ugly fences facing Kensington Rd.
Some sort of multifamily with underground parking with like 6 stories with ground floor retail on Kensington and 3 stories of residential only facing Westmount could be interesting.
My thoughts on what to do for this quirky stretch goes to Montreal. It's a completely different context but an interesting example of a place having kind of "two fronts" on a narrow lot between a main street and a secondary. The street is a row of retail between Rue Jean Talon (the main street) and the Jean Talon Market. Over time the narrow back alley became the main entrance given the way the market spills into the alley and attracts so much activity throughout the year.

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Here's a few street views to poke around at how it looks from different angles link

From Rue Jean Talon:
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From the Alley:
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Obviously there's a different context here, but shows a dual-sided approach is totally possible. I think the mistake we made is to essentially protect the residential character of Westmount area at the expense of anything on Kensington Road. As the residential was prioritized, Kensington Road was allowed to transition to a car sewer with no active frontages in this stretch. If we had reversed the protection (i.e. Kensington Road must be fronted on no matter what), we'd just have to remove all our setback and use separation rules, apply no parking minimums and let 100 years go by in a valuable location and Kensington retail strip would eventually spill over down this road.
 
My thoughts on what to do for this quirky stretch goes to Montreal. It's a completely different context but an interesting example of a place having kind of "two fronts" on a narrow lot between a main street and a secondary. The street is a row of retail between Rue Jean Talon (the main street) and the Jean Talon Market. Over time the narrow back alley became the main entrance given the way the market spills into the alley and attracts so much activity throughout the year.

View attachment 582831

Here's a few street views to poke around at how it looks from different angles link

From Rue Jean Talon:
View attachment 582832
From the Alley:
View attachment 582833

Obviously there's a different context here, but shows a dual-sided approach is totally possible. I think the mistake we made is to essentially protect the residential character of Westmount area at the expense of anything on Kensington Road. As the residential was prioritized, Kensington Road was allowed to transition to a car sewer with no active frontages in this stretch. If we had reversed the protection (i.e. Kensington Road must be fronted on no matter what), we'd just have to remove all our setback and use separation rules, apply no parking minimums and let 100 years go by in a valuable location and Kensington retail strip would eventually spill over down this road.
19 St itself is a pretty good example. A large reason why the street has turned into a nice commercial street because of the laneway on the west side. The east side only has a lane until 2nd ave, so most of the development has been between Kensington and 2nd ave. You can see from this aerial from 1948, the corner store and Dairy Lane Cafe created a commercial frontage that still exists today. The challenge with the south side of Kensington is how do you create that street frontage when it doesn't already exist, especially with the houses oriented south. However, Kensington N between 19th and 20th looks promising as a future development.

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