General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[ac3r]

I think 20 Weber E is pretty full with RoW staff. I think the old WRPS building will be available soon though.

235 King E is owned by Europro, the region is just a tenant. Until TriOS relocated there my understanding is that the upper floors were totally empty, so there's probably lots of space available. Conestoga College is already leasing from Europro for Market Square. I'd think 22 Frederick would be the first expansion choice if we're talking Europro space though, it has a few empty floors and is connected by bridge to Market Square.

Oh yeah, I forgot about 22 Frederick. AFAIK it's actually very empty though which is a plus. I think there are only about 2-3 tenants listed on that sign on the front of the building. It could be a potential site for Conestoga College expansion due to its location. However, I'm not sure the college would find it suitable. It's a tower which aren't ideal for education campuses, especially if they would share the building with office tenants. That would create significant elevator congestion, for example. I imagine that when it comes time for Conestoga College to expand again, they'll pick someplace else as there aren't that many existing buildings downtown that could work.

[KevinL]

Yeah, educational campuses are generally flat and sprawling to handle the foot traffic. Towers are thus not ideal.

[tomh009]

Yeah, educational campuses are generally flat and sprawling to handle the foot traffic. Towers are thus not ideal.

Generally, yes, but not always -- and often they are that way because they have lots of land available, so there is no need to use it effectively. There are lots of examples worldwide of campus buildings with 10 storeys and more: they just need to be designed to fit their intended use.

There really isn't anywhere in DTK to build a sprawling campus for 3000+ people (3000 students probably means at least 500 faculty and staff), unless you are proposing to do it in Victoria Park.

[ijmorlan]

Yeah, educational campuses are generally flat and sprawling to handle the foot traffic. Towers are thus not ideal.

They don’t need to be either. In particular, the spaces between the buildings are in no way needed in order to accommodate foot traffic; indeed, the spaces between the buildings make the walking routes longer. If the buildings are right next to each other, then it becomes easier to provide links between the buildings on multiple levels, which can spread out the traffic between floors and avoid congestion at ground level.

Having everything in one building actually makes a lot of sense for minimizing distances. The only issue I see with a tower is vertical circulation. Depending on how many floors are involved, this could be fixed with stairs and/or escalators.

Returning back to the specific 22 Frederick idea, I suspect vertical circulation would be the problem with that idea. But a single low-rise building (maybe the full-block podium under a taller tower) could work.

[plam]

Concordia University, for instance, is quite a vertical campus. There are isolated towers on other campuses too, but of the universities that I can think of offhand, Concordia is the most tower-y. There are a lot of elevators and escalators.

[neonjoe]

How much of the Old St Mary’s High School campus is owned by the board vs the amount that is part of the downtown community centre? The St Louis campus also has a large parking lot. Could any of these be up for conestoga’s redevelopment

[tomh009]

How much of the Old St Mary’s High School campus is owned by the board vs the amount that is part of the downtown community centre? The St Louis campus also has a large parking lot. Could any of these be up for conestoga’s redevelopment

The two blocks bounded by Weber, Ontario, Duke and College are mostly owned by various RC church organizations. That's probably more than $50M in real estate for this small chunk of DTK alone: for perspective, the RC church organizations (for the entire country) couldn't come up with $25M for residential school compensation.

[Lebronj23]

Does anyone know the acreage for the Charles Terminal? I reckon 2-3? I saw on Reddit someone said it would be over 50 mill for that plot

[tomh009]

Does anyone know the acreage for the Charles Terminal? I reckon 2-3? I saw on Reddit someone said it would be over 50 mill for that plot

The terminal itself (a regional property) is 2.56 acres; the city-owned parking lot is 0.35 acres.

I do think that $20M/acre would be a new record. Don't know whether that is realistic or not.

[ac3r]

I think for a central downtown location like the old terminal it would fetch a pretty good price. Whether or not the region decides to sell it to a private developer remains to be seen, though. I hope they don't so we can turn it into a good regional project...or at the very least some sort of partnership so it could be both a public space with perhaps some residential and commercial space.

My ideal hope would be to have it become a public square (to expand Victoria Park, even though that's a City of Kitchener park), affordable housing and commercial area. We're in desperate need for affordable housing and they could easily build a couple nice towers there and a good public space to connect King, Gaukel and gateway to Victoria Park. There's probably almost zero chance the Region of Waterloo would ever do that, though.

[Lebronj23]

On the engage WR survey I believe it was mentioned by a regional employee they do plan on putting it up for tender to a developer with certain stipulations (based on the feedback received etc) that are required for the sale.

[tomh009]

We're in desperate need for affordable housing and they could easily build a couple nice towers there (...)

We are, no doubt about that. But if you can sell the property for $50M, that will build a lot more units at a less expensive location.

[danbrotherston]

Does anyone know the acreage for the Charles Terminal? I reckon 2-3? I saw on Reddit someone said it would be over 50 mill for that plot

The terminal itself (a regional property) is 2.56 acres; the city-owned parking lot is 0.35 acres.

I do think that $20M/acre would be a new record. Don't know whether that is realistic or not.

I'm not sure if it's realistic either.

But it's prime park realestate. I would still argue the land (at least some of it) has greater value to the public than it's mere dollar value.

[Chris]

The terminal itself (a regional property) is 2.56 acres; the city-owned parking lot is 0.35 acres.

I do think that $20M/acre would be a new record. Don't know whether that is realistic or not.

I'm not sure if it's realistic either.

But it's prime park realestate. I would still argue the land (at least some of it) has greater value to the public than it's mere dollar value.

I think many of us here are of the opinion that an expansion of Victoria Park or expansion/community centre is a great use of the land. I just doubt that the two councils have the foresight to do this over selling it off to the highest bidder.

[ac3r]

If they stand to get 20 million per acre from it, then yeah they might end up unfortunately selling it because that's a good chunk of money. It'll depend how short sighted our regional council is.