08-29-2016, 01:34 PM
(08-24-2016, 09:07 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: The decision to make the Catalina townhomes looks poorer and poorer every development.
With the view of hindsight, perhaps, but consider when the Catalina townhomes were built (circa late 1990s). What did Waterloo (and Uptown Waterloo in particular) look like?
- Major employers shutting down (Labatt's, Seagrams, plus the industrial parts that are now where the Barrelyards are).
- Mutual Life Insurance was preparing itself for a takeover with no guarantee that the end result would see any presence remain here
- Local software companies were still generally small potatoes on the national or international scale. (despite being around since 1984, RIM had only just released its first "Blackberry" in 1999)
- Alexandra Public School was either shut down or in the process of being closed
- Kitchener was showing no signs of its downtown renaissance, despite many attempts
- Waterloo was struggling to define what to do with Waterloo Town Square
- Despite being in a dusty master plan, any kind of transit intensification was still a long way off (GRT was only formed in 2000).
What bank would finance a project of the scale of even the 42 in Waterloo in 2000? Likely none.
But I digress, it will be interesting to see how Waterloo reshapes its recreational landscape. Hopefully they can figure out how to retain some public recreational space in the Uptown core near an LRT stop. When the ARC property comes up for redevelopment, I think that it would be appropriate to advocate for "ground-floor public space", with some floors of commercial on top of that and residential above that. The people in this growing area will still need access to public amenities. Consolidating everything to a transit black hole like the WRMC doesn't help an aging population.