(10-28-2020, 09:53 PM)ZEBuilder Wrote: How would it be revolutionalized? seeing that this is a auburn development it feels as if it'll end like another barrel yards which i wouldn't say revolutionalized waterloo.
They're planning for it to be a lot more mixed-use than Barrel Yards is which should help, but a single project isn't going to revolutionize a neighbourhood, it can only help.
The main thing is that this one is big. In addition to the condos, they're planning a mix of office and retail spaces throughout the development. The Courtland/Borden side will have the brutalist office tower renovated (thank god), the distribution centre will be renovated into a technology oriented facility, an old garage will be turned into a retail building, eventually a retail/restaurant will be built along with parks. Below that - next to the train tracks - the parking lot will eventually be home to another 12 floor mixed use tower. The Courtland/Palmer side will be mid rise residential, with the first floor of 3 buildings available for retail/office. Next to that, Courtland/Stirling will have 2 more midrise towers and some town houses. This is all in addition to 6 highrise residential buildings along the train tracks, so there will be a lot of people living/working in this area (approx 2800 units).
This is just the start, so it's not like it's all down to Auburn. The entire neighbourhood is part of the Rockway PARTS plan which is the project to guide transit oriented development around the LRT stations in the city. There are more mixed-use projects coming to the area, too: Vive Developments has recently proposed the redevelopment of a block to be called Lower Kitchener and Perimeter Developments is planning The Junction adjacent to that, both of which are only about a 5 minute walk down the street. If you're curious to see how the city is going to be guiding development around here, check out the PARTS document I shared a few posts above.
The worst part about this thing is that it is still Auburn, so architecturally speaking it's not going to be that interesting. My expectation is that once this is all built there will be many other projects going up in the area, so we can quietly forget about how ugly Auburn projects are. At best, it means more people, office and retail space in the urban core, which is never a bad thing.