General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[Owen]

As to whether or not a tall (would six floors be tall? Not much taller than what’s there now) building would constitute bad planning I’m not sure. But I don’t see the neighbourhood opposition to it being too focused given the situation as it is now. Though I guess such opposition is often not logical, so maybe there would be people who would like to have their cake and eat it too, and would complain that the site is being redeveloped while simultaneously hoping for it to be cleaned up.

Thanks a lot for your analysis, and I can see how that would make sense. I’m not really positive if the neighbourhood is quite ‘up-and-coming’ enough for all that (still no plans for the school board building around the corner on Moore, for instance), but I’d be happy to be surprised.

I’m with you that some level of government should probably clean it up or share in the cost of cleaning it up. Again, I’ve never seen anything resembling a real estimate of the real remediation costs, but it’s been suggested to me that they would be “massive” (whatever that means). It’s gone up for sale before without any takers, so I think the City will need to try something different (chip in itself, or seek a commitment from a higher level of government) if we’re going to see anything happen here.

<10 floors is mid-rise (tall building is 10 or more) ... you bring up a good point though, maybe something like the Walter st. development could fit here - but if they can manage to keep the existing it would certainly have a lot more charm (again, thinking of the Mansion st. Lofts). Those are really rough calculations - but it seems like something interesting could make sense. By 'up and coming' I simply meant relative proximity to all the excitment around the transit hub - IMO, locating some brick & beam office space mixed with Condos in a residential neighborhood, but still within a 10 min walk of the LRT and in proximity to all the other high-tech/startup action would be a pretty desirable mix for both residents and businesses (thinking startups).

Whatever goes in there, the name of the game is density. I find it funny how the comments on TheRecord.com are forever begrudging both development and property taxes, when the only solution to keeping taxes lower is development that increases density... lol.