(06-09-2016, 09:34 AM)panamaniac Wrote:(06-09-2016, 09:12 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: Was at the Tall Building Urban Design Guidelines meeting last night (I'm going to start calling it The BUDGie, for the acronym, and because our ability to accommodate tall buildings and to do them well is a canary-in-the-coalmine of sorts for our urban fabric.
After the roundtables, where people had voted on 8 facets of The BUDGie, and discussed the table's top 3 in detail, the main areas of concern were around public and private open spaces, massing and scale, fitting into local context, architecture, and safety. One table's consensus was that tall buildings should start with boulevard sidewalks, then greenway buffer, then public park, and if you could actually fit a building onto the remaining parcel surrounded by this massive buffer, well it didn't really need to be more than 4 storeys, did it? (note: The BUDGie concerns only structures of 9+ storeys) I was also a bit shocked that a resident living across from Google felt that 1Vic was too tall for the area, and even Google's expansion was a bit massive, even if the preservation of much old building was appreciated. There was some nodding when I mentioned that with GRT/IONy the /GO Bus/GO Train/Greyhound/VIA/Regional Roads with highway access/potential high-speed-rail, King and Victoria should be the densest, tallest place in the region. Still, I was left with the feeling that a lot of people in the area have the mindset of wanting to be close to the amenities of downtown, but don't want neighbours that don't live the same as them (fake-itecture was something the developers and architects at my table lamented, but many other tables seemed to champion).
Online information can be found here and comments submitted to Dayna.Edwards@kitchener.ca, and further consultations will happen this year, with the initial draft coming in July.
I'm so disappointed that I didn't know that this meeting was taking place. Your post and the article in the Record make the meeting sound like the first salvo in a coming battle between developers and the old SFH neighbourhoods of the core. I hope I'm wrong about that.
By the way, what is "fake-itchture"?
I was there last night as well - this is actually (finally) the progression of the City Council ask for tall building guidelines that resulted from my objection to Momentum's 100 Victoria in fall of 2014. I happened to be sitting beside a Toronto developer at my table, and he commented that the trouble with developers is that they are almost always focused inwardly at the site because of the financial pressures involved - there is no incentive to look outwardly from a dollars and cents perspective. (This is certainly what I experienced, and what many of you have commented on re: other developments - i.e. kings crossing and it's interface with King st.) Ultimately, our table's primary comment was on the importance of consideration of context in terms of scale, massing, architecture and compatibility (and by context we don't mean preserve the old or try to fit in with 'fakitecture', we simply mean: Think - plan - and design - for what's going to be on the other side of the property lines, and even the extended area). Overall I was impressed with the direction the city is taking - instead of operating in a policy vacuum where developers have a free-for-all, Kitchener is going to be way ahead of the game by having clear guidelines in place so that proposed developments have fewer objections when they make it to the public meetings and council.