General Urban Waterloo Updates and Rumours

[tomh009]

All right, everyone, can we please drop this discussion right here?

[ac3r]

Absolutely! I was just hoping to share some bright news regarding much need specific inclusivity - during Pride Month, which really goes beyond sexual/gender identity and reaches into Indigenous and Indian cultures - towards the trans and the rest of the local community in Waterloo Region; didn't expect someone to seriously come in here - of all places - to say it's empty virtue signaling and that we all ought to piss wherever we like no matter what the signs say and entirely miss the point. My sincerest apologies for enjoying to see our city be inclusive...I think...

[mdu]

I mean, it didn't even seem to me as if it was advertised as related to Pride. Yes, the twitter account has a Pride flag for the occasion, but the tweet just mentioned it's unisex IMO the installation was probably brought on by the recent prominence, perhaps COVID-related, of the push for public bathrooms across North America.

[ac3r]

Waterloo NIMBYs are complaining again, this time about a building recently approved which they perceive to not have enough parking (40 spots for 46 units): https://outline.com/uAf4kd

[panamaniac]

Waterloo NIMBYs are complaining again, this time about a building recently approved which they perceive to not have enough parking (40 spots for 46 units): https://outline.com/uAf4kd

And with the usual impact, it would seem.

[bgb_ca]

Waterloo NIMBYs are complaining again, this time about a building recently approved which they perceive to not have enough parking (40 spots for 46 units): https://outline.com/uAf4kd

I live fairly close to this and am OK with this. This is close to the Allan ION station (About 300m), and call BS on his parking argument. It sounds like he is grasping at straws to stop this.

Speaking of this area, I noticed a sign for a new development that is planned just up the road from this in a vacant lot (63 Union E) for 4 stacked townhouses. Not sure if it was mentioned or not.

[danbrotherston]

Waterloo NIMBYs are complaining again, this time about a building recently approved which they perceive to not have enough parking (40 spots for 46 units): https://outline.com/uAf4kd

I live fairly close to this and am OK with this. This is close to the Allan ION station (About 300m), and call BS on his parking argument. It sounds like he is grasping at straws to stop this.

Speaking of this area, I noticed a sign for a new development that is planned just up the road from this in a vacant lot (63 Union E) for 4 stacked townhouses. Not sure if it was mentioned or not.

I dunno....I think it's a fundamental thing. Some people just don't even comprehend the concept of living without a car. But it is exhausting to hear "oh, but the traffic, also build more parking"...it's enough to drive people mad.

Reporters like Outhit do their best to push the ignorant narrative though, that is no help.

[tomh009]

Outhit's article on this is actually fairly balanced reporting. He quotes the two neighbours who complained but he also has several quotes from Bonoguore, and also mentions the (unusually reasonable number of) bicycle parking spaces.

[danbrotherston]

Outhit's article on this is actually fairly balanced reporting. He quotes the two neighbours who complained but he also has several quotes from Bonoguore, and also mentions the (unusually reasonable number of) bicycle parking spaces.

Is this sarcasm? Or are we not reading the same article?

He has a single paragraph which invalidates the previous seven paragraphs quoting angry residents, he never quotes one expert, or discusses the developer's reasons, or even mentions that people might not have to own a car.  If you read that article, your takeaway would be that there is not enough parking.

I mean, unless you're saying that Outhit has done worse, which maybe he has, and it lacks any explicit inflammatory language (outside the headline which Outhit presumably did not write), but this could have been vastly better, in my opinion. Journalists are supposed to report the facts in their context.

[tomh009]

Outhit had done far worse. This is no Pulitzer-prize-winning article, but neither do I consider it a hack job.

[ac3r]

Outhit is more of an opinion writer disguised as a journalist due to the fact he's paid as a reporter.

Overall, everyone at The Record is terrible and the entire paper has a strange anti-development, heavily conservative minded approach to development in Waterloo Region these days. Years back, when they closed their original offices on Fairway Road, they were glorifying the renaissance of downtown Kitchener when they took over Market Square office space, the city was starting to do rework the streets and City Centre/Kaufman/Eatons/Arrow Condos were going up. Then it just feels like one day they did a 180 and started to constantly complain about how new developments in residential, office and infrastructure projects was problematic. Feels like it coincided with the LRT construction when they were pumping out articles about how disruptive it was. Not sure what went wrong. I used to respect that paper and in my youth, I even had a lot of my own stuff published there promoting development.

[Spokes]

Lets play a game....who's worse, Outhit or D'Amato?? Do I have to pick??

[tomh009]

Lets play a game....who's worse, Outhit or D'Amato??  Do I have to pick??

Different. D'Amato generally writes opinion columns, Outhit generally writes news articles.

[nms]

Can anyone point to similar sized developments that either have too much or too little parking in Waterloo Region? It might be useful when addressing these concerns to either be able to say, "Actually, here are several developments that have too much parking as it is," or, "In certain contexts there is not enough parking."

Minor case in point, my small, 48-year-old condo development (32 units of townhouses) is well served by transit, about 600m from the nearest LRT stop as well as half a dozen bus routes within a similar radius. It has 2 exclusive use parking spots per unit along with about 12 visitor spots. Some units only use one of their spots, some use two spots, while others need to rent extra spots because of the number of car users in the unit. The units were originally built as 2-3 bedroom units though additional bedrooms were added by owners since the original construction in the early 1970s. It is also conceivable that a one-bedroom unit could have two car users should they work in different directions at workplaces that are not conducive to active transportation or transit.

[tomh009]

Similar size ... to which development? We got badly off topic in this thread, so I can't figure out which development we were discussing.