TEK Tower (30 Francis) | 45 fl | U/C

[jeffster]

Luisa D'Amato never has anything good to say about this city in anything she writes and Debbie Chapman, despite being a local politician, always seems to take this pseudo-progressive attitude where she says she wants development, but then has loads of criticism to offer anything that is proposed.

I'll be curious to see how the response to this project was from the meeting this evening. I was watching for a short time, but gave up after a while since most of it was just stuff I already know about the project and companies involved. And I'm sure the community speakers were typical: "this is too big, we shouldn't become Toronto 2.0, what about parking/traffic, it's too big, traffic, too big, traffic, Toronto, traffic, progress is destroying Waterloo Region and we must stop it all." with perhaps one or two voices voicing approval.

I'm pretty confident this will get built due to the sheer scale of this...it'll provide a lot of jobs and homes, but as we've witnessed over the last year, all it takes is a few dedicated NIMBYs to rally together and stop something in its tracks. However, I think it's unlikely because there have been so many large projects approved recently. It's not that much taller than Duke Tower or the proposed 38 and 44 floor buildings at Station Park, which nobody seems to have a problem with.

I stayed for kicks

A few height concerns but mostly regarding : 

1. Amount of affordable housing.
2. Lack of Bicycle spots
3. How the city plans to enforce dwellers instead of mainly investment units 


A comment from the developer about  timeline indicated 2023 as likely to break ground 

All reasonable concerns.

1) Affordable housing -- not sure how much they can do there.
2) They need to figure out bike spots, and it should be a priority.
3) Investors invest. 2023 is a long way off, so, unsure if and what we'll see.But yeah, I do agree that it's better to have condo owners living in their unit instead of Toronto, or wherever.