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64 Margaret Ave and 217/229 Victoria St N | 6 fl | U/C
#1
Developer: Vive Development
Address : 64 Margaret Ave and 217 to 229 Victoria St. N.
Project: six story apartment facing Victoria St and two and half story apartment facing Margaret Ave

Current render:
   

Original render:
   

News article from The Record.
http://m.therecord.com/news-story/722822...-kitchener

Renders and detailed project information available in the heritage impact assessment :
https://www.google.ca/url?q=https://www....vBEWo45MLg
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#2
This development was originally posted user white_brain.
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#3
Interesting that the six storey structure (facing Victoria St) will be wood.

   
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#4
It's surprising to see how they're trying to almost replicate the look of the old Breithaupt home. Quite unusual.

I see that the driveway to the complex would give onto Margaret - I couldn't see car access to/from Victoria for a building that size, so this makes sense.
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#5
What will be important to note is that for all the efforts to make the Margaret building heritage quality, we're effectively saying that it has to be 60% smaller than it's neighbour for the sake of heritage. As well, I'm expecting that it's no coincidence that the 18-unit heritage-styled building requires an additional 94 (likely to be far less special and unstyled) unit building to subsidize the costs.
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#6
Interesting proposal.

Makes me think back to the other Margaret St proposal from a number of years ago. I always have thought that the civic district (is it still branded that?) has a lot of untapped potential.
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#7
Interesting to note that Stephen Litt is behind this project under another development company.
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#8
(04-06-2017, 09:34 PM)rangersfan Wrote: Interesting to note that Stephen Litt is behind this project under another development company.

He seems to have his hands in quite a few cookie jars
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#9
It has been a while, but there seems to be some action on this one.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/776...tage-area/
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#10
I live on Ellen and Victoria and Graham have come up to me a few times to get me to sign the petition. I don't think the height is a valid complaint, though the property buffer, maybe (although I am not personally against it, I can understand how those whose properties butt up against the development would be).

However, I think k the device has already taken a tremendous amount of effort to design a development that would fit in well with the surroundings. Considering its designed to LOOK like a heritage building, that's above and beyond what most developers would do. If these were individual houses going up that close to the property line, I doubt people would be making such a fuss - it's only because "the man" wants to build something rather than an individual homeowner that people have decided to come out as "Yeah! Fuck the man!"

I find it interesting that they say they support higher density, but are against both a larger footprint And taller buildings. Where should the density come from then? Build multiple basement levels? Sounds like NIMBYism to me.
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#11
(10-30-2017, 08:56 PM)GtwoK Wrote: I live on Ellen and Victoria and Graham have come up to me a few times to get me to sign the petition. I don't think the height is a valid complaint, though the property buffer, maybe (although I am not personally against it, I can understand how those whose properties butt up against the development would be).

However, I think k the device has already taken a tremendous amount of effort to design a development that would fit in well with the surroundings. Considering its designed to LOOK like a heritage building, that's above and beyond what most developers would do. If these were individual houses going up that close to the property line, I doubt people would be making such a fuss - it's only because "the man" wants to build something rather than an individual homeowner that people have decided to come out as "Yeah! Fuck the man!"

I find it interesting that they say they support higher density, but are against both a larger footprint AND Tyler buildings. Where should the density come from then? Build multiple basement levels? Sounds like NIMBYism to me.

From what I've read, this is my interpretation. Basically, against all development, and using heritage as nothing more than an excuse.
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#12
Heritage seems like a non-issue to me. My neighbourhood has heritage. Everyone's does. This has some designation (I wonder what these people would say if they learned their house was to be designated, though), I suppose, but I still don't think that's the issue.

I really can sympathize with the extra height and the setbacks. Three meters (ten feet) is not much of a setback from the rear lot line, especially as the homes on Ellen are on small urban lots. If they were on suburban lots 150 feet deep, it wouldn't be as much of an issue. Similarly, the height is a big change- it's a thirty percent increase from what the lot is zoned for. I can see why they would be unhappy about the prospect of a 70 foot wall ten feet from their backyard WSW of them, especially as they don't have a very large distance from their house to their lot line, anyway.

Victoria will and should be made more dense, but probably a lot less so a street like Ellen- how close to Victoria before someone's complaints about density lose legitimacy?

I have no skin in this one, so I'm just musing and trying to think how I would feel in a similar situation. My only beef is that, if the municipality is going to grant serious variances like this to allow for a six storey building on Victoria Street so close to the core, it should have retail at ground level.
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#13
I'd say that someone is always going to be upset (understandably) about this, but that they should not be heeded. Inevitably, either a tall building like this is someone's neighbour, or else the neighbour needs to be redeveloped into a slightly less tall building, and their neighbour into a slightly less tall building, and so on until finally a building only marginally larger than the first undisturbed neighbour is the final result in some series of stepdowns. But no, Victoria is part of highway 7, right near the transit hub, right near 85, near so many things: this is exactly where density goes, and indeed it is probably why the homes on Ellen St. there are cheaper than homes buried deeper away from Victoria. And I'm sorry, but this isn't a neighbourhood destroyed by density, it is in fact peppered with several massively tall buildings that add to the vibrancy of the area by providing people, providing reasons to beef up public spaces that these two no doubt enjoy.
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#14
Someone is always going to be upset, but they should not be heeded…ever? Sometimes the arguments are legitimate. I wouldn’t say that all of them are in this case, or even most, but I do see merit in the argument that additional height should not be awarded along with a reduced setback from residential properties on an adjacent street. Those setbacks are required for a reason.

“Density” isn’t binary. Regardless of the rejection of one or more of the seven variances requested, the site will receive additional density. It won’t be mixed-use, unfortunately.
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#15
No, not that someone who is upset should never be heeded, perhaps too strongly worded. I do tend to put less weight into the views of neighbours at times, rather than more, because understandably nobody wants something to change next to them in a way that they perceive as being worse. What matters more than one neighbour stopping hundreds of new neighbours from having homes is whether the new proposal makes sense in the broader context, beyond those who share a property line with the development.

Setbacks are not required, and this article further pushes false narratives about what "exemptions" are. These codes and setbacks are intended as the most unobjectionable codes available for a given zoning, such that were you to propose something within these codes anywhere at all within a particular zoning category, there should be no issue nor even grounds for discussion, because they are the most unobjectionable variety when heeded.

"Exemptions" are meant to (often too commonly) trigger the ability to further evaluate a proposal. Not all sites with a particular zoning are created equal, and zoning is set such that developers have to fight to build sensible things in a lot of places with a particular zoning, rather than the balance of responsibility shifting towards residents having to fight to keep inappropriate things out of out of context places.

On Victoria, given all its particulars as I mentioned, this is indeed a place where exemptions should be granted, because it is above and beyond as an appropriate place for this variety of density, compared to similarly zoned sites which do not have the nearby context that makes this site far more appropriate for density.
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