I think the lack of a thread was due to the fact the NIMBYs immediately sprang off their plastic wrapped couches, crawled out of their dens whilst spilling tea on the doilies and started protesting this, so it hasn't had any progress in months. Then the City of Kitchener kept delaying making a decision, so the developers brought in a legal team to represent them for that failure. If you walk around the neighbouring residential streets, there's a bunch of houses with these lawn signs (not sure why they all say 19+ floors when the proposal is 15 floors), so they're still trying to get this stopped. The website they launched - Friends of Olde Berlin Town - has a bunch of crap on it as well.
Hopefully the city makes a decision and approves this without forcing the developer to reduce the height. There are two 18 floor buildings literally 2 blocks north of it, an 18 floor building across the street, an 11 floor office across the street and a proposal for a 25 floor building across the street. I believe there will be another meeting about it sometime in October so we'll hopefully find out whether or not this gets approved...ideally without any reduction in height just to make old people happy. We need more housing and this is a perfect plot of land to build some. Their argument against it is really weak. 1) it's too tall, then 2) it's hurting the heritage of the area...but heritage protection implies protecting existing, heritage designated buildings from destruction. This is just an empty parking lot.
Hopefully the city makes a decision and approves this without forcing the developer to reduce the height. There are two 18 floor buildings literally 2 blocks north of it, an 18 floor building across the street, an 11 floor office across the street and a proposal for a 25 floor building across the street. I believe there will be another meeting about it sometime in October so we'll hopefully find out whether or not this gets approved...ideally without any reduction in height just to make old people happy. We need more housing and this is a perfect plot of land to build some. Their argument against it is really weak. 1) it's too tall, then 2) it's hurting the heritage of the area...but heritage protection implies protecting existing, heritage designated buildings from destruction. This is just an empty parking lot.