02-07-2024, 12:03 PM
(02-07-2024, 12:01 AM)ZEBuilder Wrote:(02-06-2024, 10:35 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Since when does an encampment at Weber St. affect development on the transit hub lands between King and Duke, especially the first phase of such construction? Suddenly we’re building a transit hub 3 blocks long? Now I’m a big proponent of enormously horizontally large buildings, but this is the first we’ve heard of the Duke to Weber block having anything to do with the transit hub.
Note by way of support for my consternation that the tracks wiggle over — by the time you get to Duke St. you are past the end of where a straight platform can be.
The Region was planning on using the Weber/Victoria lot as an off site parking lot for the station, there were plans floating around somewhere for it. The court ruling for the encampment effectively blocked the Regions plan for the parking lot however. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that instead of having that parking lot right at Weber/Victoria the parking lot will now be at Duke/Victoria. The property could then years down the road be converted to a TOC of some sorts along with the rest of the land owned by the Region.
I saw those drawings for the Victoria/Weber parking lot as well - it was meant for staff parking for those who would work at the transit hub. I believe they also intended to use that lot to stage materials as part of the building process.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a full redesign of the transit hub now. We're now dealing with 25,000 square metres of uninterrupted space, instead of the original 16,000 (plus the surface lot, which is about 1800). Maybe the trains will stop a little further towards Weber, or Waterloo Region Housing will push to actually include affordable housing in towers above the hub; we know they've been reviewing all regional land to see where substantial housing can be built with strong connectivity, and this feels like an obvious choice. It'd be fantastic to see a line of four or five storefronts along King St behind the Central LRT station, geared towards pedestrians using the transit space - a coffee shop, a convenience store, a bakery, any grab-and-go restaurant, a bank, a fresh grocer selling the veggies and meat you need for dinner. The fact that there was not a single shop in the original hub plans is appalling.
And how about having the Cherry Park trail cross over King as originally drawn, and run parallel with the train tracks all the way down to Weber to connect with the Weber MUT? Ideally they also scrap the idea of a surface lot, and now that they have a little bit of extra space for things like ramps, that they push the minimal parking down one level and set a building on top of it.
I do wonder if the original plan was dealing with a massive space limitation that caused them to make frustrating choices. I can only hope that the extra space will allow for some more logical decisions to get made.