(06-07-2016, 04:33 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Well, kind of.  The minimum is slightly higher at PARTS than in the central downtown core.  Not unreasonable, I think the core should be the lowest requirement there is.

(06-08-2016, 08:22 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote:

(06-07-2016, 04:33 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Well, kind of.  The minimum is slightly higher at PARTS than in the central downtown core.  Not unreasonable, I think the core should be the lowest requirement there is.

Which would take precedence in the core though? There's not much of Downtown that doesn't fall under PARTS, and I would hope that in that area we don't see higher minimums.

(06-08-2016, 06:40 PM)panamaniac Wrote:  I wonder if that means just the building housing the old Budds department store, or any of the neighbouring buildings - I've often wondered whether the Budd brothers owned the structure down as far as Petsches?  It's hard with the old Downtown building sometimes to know where one stops and where another one starts. 

(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.

(06-09-2016, 09:34 AM)panamaniac Wrote:

(06-09-2016, 09:12 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: 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).

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"?