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Charlie West (Charles & Gaukel) | 31 fl | Complete
#36
(03-29-2017, 07:18 PM)EdM Wrote: Yes, this would be great. Momentum did something interesting with parking at 1 Victoria: condo buyers don't own their spots, but instead have a perpetual lease, so it should be easier to reuse parking spaces (shared between condo owners and day users), and adapt to increasing or decreasing demand for spaces over time.
They also plan to have car share spots.

Other tidbits: it sounds like the building will have some amenities to cater to groups not well served by condos here today: dog owners and families. Plans call for some sort of astroturf doggy relief area on the top of the podium, and a dog wash / dog spa. There's talk of a playroom off the gym with a glass wall so parents can watch their kids while working out. Also apparently 15% accessible units of various sizes / locations in the building. Tri-sorting for garbage.

the42 was built with a carshare spot, but it was removed within a year or two, so I'm not as keen on carshare agreements being valid for reducing the overall parking requirements of a building anymore, unless there's an agreement in place that ties the cost of the spot into the maintenance fees long-term. Which is disappointing.

The astroturf relief area sounds interesting, but living at Kaufman it's become incredibly disappointing how many owners do not bag their doggie poop. Walk along the Victoria strip from King to the parking lot entrance, and on both sides of the sidewalk you will find a pile of poo in stages from fresh, to stepped on, to rained-into-pancake-shape every few feet. Astroturf also makes it sound like the condo board could easily remove it, which would be disappointing, and if it winds up like most condos around here, it will still be rentals saying "no pets."

The42 also had tri-sorters installed, but the board promptly disabled the organics option as soon as they were in charge.

All this is to say that while I like what Momentum puts into their plans, what happens once they turn over the keys has been incredibly disappointing so far, and council and city staff should take this evidence into account when trying to assign bonuses for design elements. Giving Momentum extra floors because they install an organics button on their garbage chutes, which promptly gets disabled by the condo board, is incredibly inappropriate.

Depending on how parking is accessed off of Hall's lane, they may need some interesting one-way or other traffic management to deal with the flow of cars from 200 parking spaces. I'm also curious at how the unit development is balanced, is it 250 one bedrooms? It would be odd to cater to pet owners, and then find that the unit mix is so biased to small square footage that none of this is likely to attract dog owners. I'd also appreciate them talking to actual condo dog owners. One of the best aspects of Kaufman for me as a pet owner has been their basement. All the storage lockers are down there, and it's a concrete floor, durable wall, long hallway area that's been excellent for me to toss a ball to my dog in, letting him run the full hallway length. There's also a slightly more open area down there (e.g. width greater than normal hallway) where my dog has been able to meet up with other dogs to play wrestle, which in 20 minutes tires him out more than hours of walking.
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RE: Charles & Gaukel Redevelopment | 25 fl | Proposed - by Viewfromthe42 - 03-30-2017, 10:58 AM

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