General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[nms]

Ah okay, that makes more sense. The original building is quite nice indeed. If they can fix that up and restore it to a more original condition, then integrate it into the new train station, I think it would be really nice. I'd welcome preserving the addition too, if they could just fix up the brick and windows on it. While many on this forum think heritage preservation is annoying or even pointless in most cases, I'm a strong defender of it when warranted. I'd rather have a city that has a mixture of old and new, lest the entire place turns into some gentrified globohomo wasteland where everything ends up looking the same.

Edit: Wow that heritage report just reminded me that there was an End of the Roll warehouse where that parking lot is. I completely forgot that existed.

The former Waterloo Legion was a former factory with bricked over windows.  After the Legion moved out, the windows were reinstalled and a tech company moved in.  I could see the Rumpel Felt building being incorporated into Regional office space (perhaps the transportation department), much the same way that Union Station originally had railway offices on the upper floors.

As for repaving the lot, I would not be surprised if the concrete floor was not rated for heavy traffic and/or all weather use.

I wonder how they came up with that haha. In the German language, Huether isn't pronounced anything like "heater"...it's more like...hoo-tear? I guess it was probably just easier to say. I'm fluent in German but the pronunciation of things is still a challenge and I've always referred to it as "Hugh-thur" as well.

Most likely the original spelling is Hüther, which translates to a herder. It's the "y" sound that English doesn't have, as in fünf (five).

I can confirm the "Heater" pronunciation.  Though not a linguist, I do know that there was a significant variation in Germanic dialects prior to German unification in the late 19th century which persisted well into the 20th Century before broadcast radio (and later movies) began to smooth out differences.  Christopher Huether, the original owner, was born in 1831 in Baden (now Baden-Württemberg), Germany, which is tucked in southwest Germany against France to the West, and Switzerland to the south.

[danbrotherston]

Edit: Wow that heritage report just reminded me that there was an End of the Roll warehouse where that parking lot is. I completely forgot that existed.

And the retaining wall along the tracks is actually the back wall of End of the Roll (and before that, other warehouse uses presumably). I’m actually not clear on why they repaved the entire lot — a lot of it was covered with the concrete floor of End of the Roll. Why not just remove the roof and columns, leaving the floor as pavement and the back wall as retaining wall?

Paving parking lots...it's what we do.

[Bytor]

Today I learned after more than 22 years in Kitchener that "Huether" is properly pronounced "Heater" rather than "Hugh-thur".

I wonder how they came up with that haha. In the German language, Huether isn't pronounced anything like "heater"...it's more like...hoo-tear? I guess it was probably just easier to say. I'm fluent in German but the pronunciation of things is still a challenge and I've always referred to it as "Hugh-thur" as well.

In German 'ue' is just a way of not having to use an umlaut diacritic, 'ü' and keep your set of movable type limited and thus less expensive. So 'Huether' is just a variation of 'Hüter', which means 'herdsman'.

The pronunciation shown using IPA is /ˈhyːtɐ/.

That /yː/ phoneme is done by rounding your lips as if IPA /uː/ (the 'oo' of English 'food' or 'u' in 'rule') but making the sound of IPA /iː/ (the 'ee' of English 'feet' or 'ea' of 'heat'). Since neither /yː/ is not part of English and you have problems making it, just saying /iː/ is the more commonly accepted approximation for non-native speakers. As it is a monophthong, not a diphthong, saying IPA /iːuː/ (or 'ee-oo' in English) would not work. But few Germans would scold a non-native speaker for saying /ˈhuːtɐ/ rather than /ˈhiːtɐ/ but the would if you tried to say /ˈhiːuːtɐ/

Interestingly, in Alemannic dialects, the Old High German vowel sounds that eventually became /yː/ in Middle High (and thus Standard) German ended up as /iː/ instead, and different vowel sounds turned in /yː/. So they both have , just in different places.

Having said all that, things go out the window when words get borrowed into another language, and the way they get adapted to that new language depends on the phonetics of it. So just because 'heetah' might be generally accepted way for a non-native speaker to say 'Huether' when speaking German, that it came into our English as sounding like 'hooter' or even 'hoother' because the lip rounding got emphasized instead of the /iː/ sound is perfectly OK.

The only "correct" pronunciations in languages are for peoples' names and endonyms for groups, out of basic human respect for each other. Everything else should be descriptivist rather than prescriptivist.

That is your linguistic rant for the day. :-)

[Acitta]

I wonder how they came up with that haha. In the German language, Huether isn't pronounced anything like "heater"...it's more like...hoo-tear? I guess it was probably just easier to say. I'm fluent in German but the pronunciation of things is still a challenge and I've always referred to it as "Hugh-thur" as well.

In German 'ue' is just a way of not having to use an umlaut diacritic, 'ü' and keep your set of movable type limited and thus less expensive. So 'Huether' is just a variation of 'Hüter', which means 'herdsman'.

The pronunciation shown using IPA is /ˈhyːtɐ/.

That /yː/ phoneme is done by rounding your lips as if IPA /uː/ (the 'oo' of English 'food' or 'u' in 'rule') but making the sound of IPA /iː/ (the 'ee' of English 'feet' or 'ea' of 'heat'). Since neither /yː/ is not part of English and you have problems making it, just saying /iː/ is the more commonly accepted approximation for non-native speakers. As it is a monophthong, not a diphthong, saying IPA /iːuː/ (or 'ee-oo' in English) would not work. But few Germans would scold a non-native speaker for saying /ˈhuːtɐ/ rather than /ˈhiːtɐ/ but the would if you tried to say /ˈhiːuːtɐ/

Interestingly, in Alemannic dialects, the Old High German vowel sounds that eventually became /yː/ in Middle High (and thus Standard) German ended up as /iː/ instead, and different vowel sounds turned in /yː/. So they both have , just in different places.

Having said all that, things go out the window when words get borrowed into another language, and the way they get adapted to that new language depends on the phonetics of it. So just because 'heetah' might be generally accepted way for a non-native speaker to say 'Huether' when speaking German, that it came into our English as sounding like 'hooter' or even 'hoother' because the lip rounding got emphasized instead of the /iː/ sound is perfectly OK.

The only "correct" pronunciations in languages are for peoples' names and endonyms for groups, out of basic human respect for each other. Everything else should be descriptivist rather than prescriptivist.

That is your linguistic rant for the day. :-)

In this article from The Record about the history of C.N. Huether's brewery in Kitchener, it mentions that "Blue Top became so popular that it became the company's name in 1936. The owners had already decided to drop the Huether name because then, as now, most people mispronounced the name saying "hugh-ther"."

[westwardloo]

Who owns this land?  Another Tower?

https://kitchener.citynews.ca/2024/03/25...is-summer/

Did you read the article? 

It clearly states that YW-KW owns the property. Funds from the sale will go to providing smaller shelter spaces scattered around the city. 

But yes a developer will more than likely buy the property and propose a tower. Hopefully they can get the x-copper site as well.

[SF22]

Who owns this land?  Another Tower?

https://kitchener.citynews.ca/2024/03/25...is-summer/

Did you read the article? 

It clearly states that YW-KW owns the property. Funds from the sale will go to providing smaller shelter spaces scattered around the city. 

But yes a developer will more than likely buy the property and propose a tower. Hopefully they can get the x-copper site as well.

I was thinking the same thing, it would be great for them to eat up the X-Copper property and densify that block some more. There's also 19 Weber, the little yellow brick house between X-Copper and the Regency tower. 

Extra points if the designers can collaborate with St Peter's Church on Queen to make a nice little pedestrian path that cuts through mid-block from Frederick to Queen, perhaps with a little hidden greenspace courtyard in the centre of the block.

[ac3r]

At least this means I can wait at the bus stop across the street without being constantly accosted for spare change. That place has got to be one of the worst spots, with the exception of out front of the Tim Hortons and LCBO.

[Rainrider22]

I wouldn't be surprised if they already have a buyer in mind considering they are already talking about shuttering the current model and rolling out the new model in the next few months and years...

[nms]

Pity anyone living on the north (eg Weber) side of the DTK building who may be losing their views.

It would be nice if the YWCA could find a partner to use that site for affordable housing (eg like Indwell at St. Marks). If most of the cost the makes affordable housing project difficult is the cost of the land, this could go a long way to making it a possible affordable housing site.

[ZEBuilder]

The old CTV building has a sold sign on it.

Vive is the owner of this, they now have a early concept for the site, it will certainly will make midtown tall to say the least (55 floors (green), 44 floors(pink), 38 floors(blue), 16 floors(orange)). Sorry for the poor quality concept plan.

[attachment=8696]

[Lebronj23]

Wowzers! ZE where did you find this? ^

[ZEBuilder]

Wowzers! ZE where did you find this? ^

I've been digging through all the public comment documents for Growing Together, there's hundreds of pages worth, there's a pile of development proposals within it, along with your typical NIMBY nonsense, if even half of them come to fruition there will be a lot of height to come. A few of the proposals are definitely quick mock ups for justifying certain zones in Growing Together, (SGA-3 instead of SGA-2, or SGA-4 instead of SGA-3) but there are definitely some that are deemed "complete applications" by the City so we might see some site plan applications or ZBA applications soon.

Once I've gone through all the documents I'll make a post with a summary of them all, thankfully it's not all Vive, some of the renderings certainly look very promising. I'm also working on a 3D model of the future skyline so I'll include all of these proposals in it as well, that will just take a while to complete.

[Lebronj23]

That’s awesome, thanks for digging through. Hope to see some new threads with some new height!

[ZEBuilder]

That’s awesome, thanks for digging through. Hope to see some new threads with some new height!

I'll definitely be making some new threads or updating existing threads in the coming days. Without giving too much away there's multiple 50+ floor buildings that I've dug up, a bunch of normal Vive nonsense and then there's a very large project that seems to be taking inspiration from "The Well".

[Rainrider22]

Wowzers! ZE where did you find this? ^

I've been digging through all the public comment documents for Growing Together, there's hundreds of pages worth, there's a pile of development proposals within it, along with your typical NIMBY nonsense, if even half of them come to fruition there will be a lot of height to come. A few of the proposals are definitely quick mock ups for justifying certain zones in Growing Together, (SGA-3 instead of SGA-2, or SGA-4 instead of SGA-3) but there are definitely some that are deemed "complete applications" by the City so we might see some site plan applications or ZBA applications soon.

Once I've gone through all the documents I'll make a post with a summary of them all, thankfully it's not all Vive, some of the renderings certainly look very promising. I'm also working on a 3D model of the future skyline so I'll include all of these proposals in it as well, that will just take a while to complete.

Dude, I cant imagine how much effort that takes you.  Thank you so much for sharing your findings with this group.  I know I really appreciate the people here who know how to navigate their way through open sourcing that is available to the public, and glean the information that this forum appreciates.  Many thanks again.