General Urban Waterloo Updates and Rumours

[Bjays93]

I mean this render doesnt look terrible. I've certainly seen worse

The render itself is especially bad. The lighting and shadows are all messed up in it. Whoever rendered it has the recessed lighting above the balconies illuminated, yet it's broad daylight. The top floor has light mysteriously coming out of the walls (in addition to the lights) and for whatever reason it's also casting strips of shadow through the wall back onto the overhang of the roof. The background buildings - while not usually that important to detail - look seriously messed up in terms of perspective and texture. The little figures used for scale are all in completely incorrect scales and a couple of them are really desaturated for some reason.

I'm actually pretty surprised these are on their public portfolio but...maybe they uploaded them by accident? I feel this firm has got to have the lowest standards I've seen in Ontario though. They make Drewlo and Auburn look good. They claim to have been around for 60 years but I have never heard of them until recently. I haven't seen them do anything good yet either. Their "best" work to date is One Richmond Row in London but whoever designed it completely plagiarized the Graziani and Corazza Architects' design of Lago at the Waterfront in Toronto. It's almost the exact same building, but worse because it's SRM.

I should restate myself. I dont think the building in the render looks terrible. I've seen much worse looking buildings. I was not trying to say the render itself was good

[urbd]

No commercial space on an important corridor? The people in the surrounding neighbourhoods need services and amenities. Another lost opportunity for Waterloo.

[Bjays93]

Somethings happening at sunlife by union and king. Looks like cladding replacement maybe?

[KevinL]

They've been working on that the last couple years, I think.

[Bjays93]

They've been working on that the last couple years, I think.

Well this is the first time I've noticed apparently lol

[Tony_Plow]

I've heard that the Atrium and Angie's properties in Uptown have been purchased by Zehr Group. They're apparently planning a new tower and have notified tenants of the Atrium they have 18 months to vacate.

Rumours of a 25 floor condo tower, but no specifics (and unclear how much that was speculation vs info from Zehr). But the 18 months left was pretty unambiguous (it's from the owner of one of the shops).

Cool.  Would be an appropriate place for intensification, although I am sure tenants are not happy.  Look forward to hopefully hearing more.

Would be great if we could get confirmation of this proposal.  I would love to see more density in the Uptown core, especially in the vicinity of the public square.

[tomh009]

Progress on the St Louis condominiums remains slow:

The St Louis School must take the cake for the slowest project in the region beating out the American Block and 165 King St W. The condo conversion has been ongoing since about 2015! The project is looking better, there are some terraces built out and you can see some drywall inside, but the common area hallways, for example, have not had any work done yet. It surely will not finish this year.

And will it be condos? It looks like a condo project, but there is zero signage of anything.

   

[jwilliamson]

All the houses on the north side of Erb between Roslin and Dunbar are boarded up.

[ac3r]

All the houses on the north side of Erb between Roslin and Dunbar are boarded up.

They've been boarded up since sometime last year. I have no idea what the plan is with those, though.

[westwardloo]

Angies Kitchen is closing down to make way for redevelopment. Looks like the rumor a couple weeks ago were true. Hopefully eventually the whole parking lot get redeveloped in the future. I know there are probably serious water issues with the parking lot as Laurel Creek runs close to the site. I wonder how big the parcel of land is? I believe the city owns the parking lot north of the LRT station. 

https://www.kitchenertoday.com/local-new...wn-3758080

[Nextasy]

Stumbled on the following proposal for 115 Bridgeport Rd E,  dated March 2021. By "Lin S. Keung Co. Ltd" owners

[ac3r]

Perfect spot for a development of that size. Interestingly, Lin Keung was the owner of the original Victory Sports clothing factory outlet that was on this location. My mom would always take us there to buy cheap clothes at pretty good prices. He shut the business down due to competition with overseas sweatshop clothing and has been working in property development since. I hope he has success with this because he is a pretty valued local business man.

Here's a story on the closure of the business: https://outline.com/M9es3u

[kalis0490]

Is this the best student building in waterloo? https://www.domushousing.com/property/116-university/

Its leed platinum certified and the architect is Perkins and Will who are high profile architects. UT Waterloo could use some of these projects

[ac3r]

It's definitely nice!

Compared to this? https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4807793,...384!8i8192

Yuck.

[tomh009]

Compared to this? https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4807793,...384!8i8192

Yuck.

Ugh. Can't unsee that now.