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Uptown Public Realm Strategy
#16
I've held off on posting on this because I wasn't entirely sure where I stand, and frankly, I'm still not. On one hand, green space and public space in the core are good. But I think it's a stretch to justify it with linking it to city hall. That's in part because Waterloo's City Hall isn't that much of an interactive building. Like darts said people go to the public space because it's in front of city hall in Kitchener. This isn't the same.

With the water pumping station there, is this even a develop-able property?
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#17
Waterloo City Hall is in such an unfortunately drab building, it could have been built for any commercial purpose and nobody would guess. (The same was true of Kitchener's city hall through to the mid-90s).

As for the park space across the street, if it needs to remain green for water management purposes, so be it.
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#18
(09-28-2018, 11:00 AM)KevinL Wrote: Waterloo City Hall is in such an unfortunately drab building, it could have been built for any commercial purpose and nobody would guess.

My understanding is that it was built for “any commercial purpose” (by CN, the owner of the rail yards formerly on that site), and then sold to the City.

It’s not a horrible building, but it’s not a really impressive landmark. Kitchener definitely has something with more presence.
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#19
(09-28-2018, 11:00 AM)KevinL Wrote: Waterloo City Hall is in such an unfortunately drab building, it could have been built for any commercial purpose and nobody would guess. (The same was true of Kitchener's city hall through to the mid-90s).

As for the park space across the street, if it needs to remain green for water management purposes, so be it.

That's a big part of it, it's a boring building, does a park across the street help much?

As an aside, Kitchener City Hall, pre current location was 22 Frederick right?
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#20
(09-28-2018, 11:18 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(09-28-2018, 11:00 AM)KevinL Wrote: Waterloo City Hall is in such an unfortunately drab building, it could have been built for any commercial purpose and nobody would guess.

My understanding is that it was built for “any commercial purpose” (by CN, the owner of the rail yards formerly on that site), and then sold to the City.

It’s not a horrible building, but it’s not a really impressive landmark. Kitchener definitely has something with more presence.

Cambridge too.  Not to derail the thread.
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#21
(09-28-2018, 11:18 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(09-28-2018, 11:00 AM)KevinL Wrote: Waterloo City Hall is in such an unfortunately drab building, it could have been built for any commercial purpose and nobody would guess.

My understanding is that it was built for “any commercial purpose” (by CN, the owner of the rail yards formerly on that site), and then sold to the City.

It’s not a horrible building, but it’s not a really impressive landmark. Kitchener definitely has something with more presence.

Does it really need more presence? The majority of the operations at any city hall is office work. Dressing it up doesn't change it.
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#22
(09-28-2018, 11:43 AM)darts Wrote:
(09-28-2018, 11:18 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: My understanding is that it was built for “any commercial purpose” (by CN, the owner of the rail yards formerly on that site), and then sold to the City.

It’s not a horrible building, but it’s not a really impressive landmark. Kitchener definitely has something with more presence.

Does it really need more presence? The majority of the operations at any city hall is office work. Dressing it up doesn't change it.

The building should also serve as a civic building, I'm not sure that it does in Waterloo, the parking lot may serve that purpose more at this point, but in Kitchener, the building itself serves as a civic building, hosting events, protests, art, whatever the need is.

I don't recall Waterloo having a similar building.  Even the cycling committee meets elsewhere.
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#23
(09-28-2018, 11:35 AM)Spokes Wrote:
(09-28-2018, 11:00 AM)KevinL Wrote: As an aside, Kitchener City Hall, pre current location was 22 Frederick right?

Indeed.
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#24
(09-28-2018, 11:50 AM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(09-28-2018, 11:43 AM)darts Wrote: Does it really need more presence? The majority of the operations at any city hall is office work. Dressing it up doesn't change it.

The building should also serve as a civic building, I'm not sure that it does in Waterloo, the parking lot may serve that purpose more at this point, but in Kitchener, the building itself serves as a civic building, hosting events, protests, art, whatever the need is.

I don't recall Waterloo having a similar building.  Even the cycling committee meets elsewhere.

Don't the pools and ice rinks and libraries have rooms for this? Wouldn't this be better too since it actually gives it the oppurtunity to move it around the city giving everyone access. Protests are usually on sidewalks anyways so people can see it, so that wouldn't change, they can protest at the building or the public square.
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#25
I think it is almost always a mistake to develop park space. It may seem underutilized now, but once it's developed, it's gone. If the goal is intensification, the focus should be on increasing it within the private realm. Public spaces, on the other hand, should be preserved.
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#26
When the Buskers Festival and Jazz Festival were moved from King Street to the parking lots behind City Hall, it opened up the mindset of reimagining these parking lots as temporary public spaces. Unfortunately, while the Public Square is useful, it's more difficult to expand programming into King Street because of the presence of the transit (and in particular the LRT wires). Unlike King Street in Kitchener, where the Christkindl Market is slowly expanding into King Street, that's not an option here.

A huge downside of the parking lots is that they are very hot spaces. Creating green space around the Water Pumping station would offer some respite from the heat. Roughly speaking, that space also looks to be about the half the size of the combined parking lots that are used for the Buskers Festival (but about 4 times the space of the Uptown Public Square).

On a related note, one of Waterloo's original public squares was at the corner of Erb and Albert currently where the exKPMG tower stands, in front of the City Hall. The public square included a performance stage and later a Cenotaph. The Cenotaph survived the redevelopment and used to stand in the green space between Knox and this tower in what is still called, Memorial Park. The Cenotaph was moved to its current location some time in the 1990s.
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#27
My understanding is similar to megabytephreak's but in addition that the pumping station is a heritage property.

So between the infrastructure and heritage limitations there isn't much left to do with the space other than green space/park.

Maybe turn in to some fancy restaurant surrounded by green space?
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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#28
(09-28-2018, 02:01 PM)nms Wrote: When the Buskers Festival and Jazz Festival were moved from King Street to the parking lots behind City Hall, it opened up the mindset of reimagining these parking lots as temporary public spaces.  Unfortunately, while the Public Square is useful, it's more difficult to expand programming into King Street because of the presence of the transit (and in particular the LRT wires).  Unlike King Street in Kitchener, where the Christkindl Market is slowly expanding into King Street, that's not an option here.

A huge downside of the parking lots is that they are very hot spaces.  Creating green space around the Water Pumping station would offer some respite from the heat.  Roughly speaking, that space also looks to be about the half the size of the combined parking lots that are used for the Buskers Festival (but about 4 times the space of the Uptown Public Square).

On a related note, one of Waterloo's original public squares was at the corner of Erb and Albert currently where the exKPMG tower stands, in front of the City Hall.  The public square included a performance stage and later a Cenotaph.  The Cenotaph survived the redevelopment and used to stand in the green space between Knox and this tower in what is still called, Memorial Park.  The Cenotaph was moved to its current location some time in the 1990s.
The challenge would be the green space would not be fully accessible without paving it so it would exclude people where the parking lot is more inclusive.
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#29
(09-28-2018, 02:01 PM)nms Wrote: Roughly speaking, that space also looks to be about the half the size of the combined parking lots that are used for the Buskers Festival (but about 4 times the space of the Uptown Public Square).

Pumping Station property area (minus heritage building footprint) = 7,600m2
City Centre Parking lots area = 4,900m2
Public square (not including steps/ramps, upper areas; flat part only) area = 1,200m2
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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#30
Thanks for doing the math.  The space is larger than I thought.  On a related note, I do believe that the City of Kitchener has a plan in the future to put a reservoir covered by green space in the current large green space next to the Victoria Park clock tower, so there is precedent for mixing infrastructure in the same footprint.
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