900 King St W | 25 fl | U/C

[ac3r]

A 25 floor residential building has been proposed for 900 King Street West. The developer is Cantiro Homes, the site plan is by MHBC and the architecture is by SRM Architects (which explains why it looks so terrible). It is proposed to have 231 rental units, 1 floor of retail (ground floor) and 3 levels of parking (2 underground, 1 within the podium) for 108 parking spaces.

New rendering:

Old renderings:

The full set of planning documents submitted to the City of Kitchener can be found here: https://app2.kitchener.ca/AppDocs/OpenDa...623188.pdf

[jamincan]

I honestly hate 'realistic' renderings. I don't think they ever really come close to being realistic in the end. Something like this at least communicates that it is an artistic representation so that differences in the final product won't come across like a bait and switch so much.

For what it's worth, I think it's not terrible aesthetically, though certainly not exemplary. The location would be fantastic to live at with the ION stop directly in front, and Central Fresh only a block away or so, though I'd probably aim for a unit facing away from King St. The street interaction seems very good; it would be tempting for a developer to have a larger setback at this location, and I appreciate that they're establishing a street wall here.

[tomh009]

Yeah, I think not terrible. The podium may actually turn out nicely. The tower is mostly meh, looks like not much effort went into it, but it's not awful.

Significant new density in the hospital/KCI/Central area, and that's really great.

P.S. I'm really happy that the city is now posting the planning application documents as a normal procedure.

[ac3r]

Significant new density in the hospital/KCI/Central area, and that's really great.

I think this is a great location to start densifying. There is already Midtown Lofts, Cortés and Kings Tower along this stretch of road. The Bright Building is currently under construction. There is this proposal (which I suspect will go ahead, as they now have fencing around the current building so they'll probably be demolishing it soon) and 21 and 22 floor condos proposed for King and John - though I think the latter is stuck in limbo...it's still listed on the City of Waterloo website but there has been no progress since 2017.

Overall, there is a lot of opportunity along here. The YMCA offices beside Central Market have a giant parking lot behind it that never gets used and could be a good place for a new project. Across from the hospital and the Sun Life parking lot, there are a lot of really old, low rise doctor/dentist offices that could get redeveloped at some point. And who knows, maybe the Sun Life parking lot will get sold off as well...they recently announced that they will be allowing all their employees who wish to work from home to do so. That thing takes up an entire city block.

[cherrypark]

I guess SRM did 63 Scott St and it turned out fine, if not that groundbreaking. This one looks somewhat uninspired but the final choices and quality of exterior materials will probably make or break if that becomes simple but pleasant like Scott St. or a leaky, stained brick like 1 Columbia and the rest of their ugly monuments in Northdale.

Great spot for a new building though and hope they put a few more trees on the street front since that part of King St is particularly concrete and barren.

[ac3r]

Great spot for a new building though and hope they put a few more trees on the street front since that part of King St is particularly concrete and barren.

This is the kind of location where I wish the region decided to go with green tracks for the LRT. Instead of rusty concrete beds as we have now, it could have been a nice strip of grass with bits of wildflowers. They look good, but also provide benefits for drainage and mitigate heat island effects.

[danbrotherston]

Great spot for a new building though and hope they put a few more trees on the street front since that part of King St is particularly concrete and barren.

This is the kind of location where I wish the region decided to go with green tracks for the LRT. Instead of rusty concrete beds as we have now, it could have been a nice strip of grass with bits of wildflowers. They look good, but also provide benefits for drainage and mitigate heat island effects.

It certainly would be better, does anyone have a definitive answer on why this was rejected? I don't know anywhere in N/A this is used, but it seems common in Europe.

Like...is it because we're cheap and green tracks cost more money in some way, or is it because we're pathetic and terrified of trying something new, and we've just never done them before?

[neonjoe]

This is the kind of location where I wish the region decided to go with green tracks for the LRT. Instead of rusty concrete beds as we have now, it could have been a nice strip of grass with bits of wildflowers. They look good, but also provide benefits for drainage and mitigate heat island effects.

It certainly would be better, does anyone have a definitive answer on why this was rejected? I don't know anywhere in N/A this is used, but it seems common in Europe.

Like...is it because we're cheap and green tracks cost more money in some way, or is it because we're pathetic and terrified of trying something new, and we've just never done them before?

The ECLRT will have green tracks in the surface sections http://thecrosstown.ca/sites/default/fil...ebsite.pdf (Search for Green Tracks in the pdf)

[taylortbb]

is it because we're cheap and green tracks cost more money in some way

Mostly this. They cost more to install, and more to maintain. To keep ION within its budget just about all the landscaping/appearance related expenses got cut. In some cases the cities stepped in and upgraded things, out of their budgets, but for most of the route it was built to be cheap.

I do remember discussing green tracks with the project team, and they really liked the idea. So I don't think it was a fear of something new.

[ac3r]

I can accept that the Region of Waterloo is cheap. But I find it hard to believe that concrete railroad ties with some dirt and grass seed thrown on top would cost more money than pouring thousands of pounds of concrete and gravel ballast.

[ac3r]

I asked someone indirectly involved in this project (but who works for one company involved in it) for more information on the design. I was allowed to see a few more images of much higher resolution and...yuck. If they approve this and they use this design, it's going to look like a Soviet era brutalist apartment tower.

[jeffster]

If they approve this and they use this design, it's going to look like a Soviet era brutalist apartment tower.

I said this in my head with a Russian accent.

[taylortbb]

I can accept that the Region of Waterloo is cheap. But I find it hard to believe that concrete railroad ties with some dirt and grass seed thrown on top would cost more money than pouring thousands of pounds of concrete and gravel ballast.

The on-street sections aren't generally done with railroad ties and ballast, so it's not just throwing some dirt on top. Even if you did throw dirt on top of the ballasted track, that would totally eliminate the ability inspect things, like any of the clips used to fasten the rails to the ties. There's some actual engineering involved here.

The construction of the embedded track is actually quite simple. They built it all in one layer here, rather than the two layer approach Toronto uses. It's basically just booting the rails, holding them in place, and then pouring concrete around them. Having to create space for soil would mean more formwork, and after that it's not as simple as "throw some dirt and seed down" if you want to it to look any good. Especially with the amount of salt that would end up on it being part of the roadway.

The upfront cost might not be that much more, but the maintenance certainly would be.

[ac3r]

The on-street sections aren't generally done with railroad ties and ballast, so it's not just throwing some dirt on top. Even if you did throw dirt on top of the ballasted track, that would totally eliminate the ability inspect things, like any of the clips used to fasten the rails to the ties. There's some actual engineering involved here.

The construction of the embedded track is actually quite simple. They built it all in one layer here, rather than the two layer approach Toronto uses. It's basically just booting the rails, holding them in place, and then pouring concrete around them. Having to create space for soil would mean more formwork, and after that it's not as simple as "throw some dirt and seed down" if you want to it to look any good. Especially with the amount of salt that would end up on it being part of the roadway.

The upfront cost might not be that much more, but the maintenance certainly would be.

Yeah I know how it was constructed, I remember seeing it all.

To achieve green railroad tracks as we're discussing, you can achieve it in a few ways. The most common is simply to use ballastless track, which is what is used in things like subway tunnels. There are numerous ways of constructing it depending on what you require, but essentially the track sits on a concrete bed (buried well below the track itself) and then the track is affixed to smaller railroad "ties". If you look closely at this photo you can see what I mean. Then, you can simply cover that lower layer of concrete with soil and grass. If extra drainage is required, holes can be made in that lower layer of concrete, though in most cases ballastless track has superior drainage to begin with.. Maintenance should not really be an issue, because in fact, ballastless track tends to require far less maintenance than normal tracks. You can still inspect the track where needed, but overall the maintenance is lessened. Initial construction may cost more, but overall costs should be less in the long term as there is less repair work necessary. This sort of construction also improves vibration impacts, which is a really important thing, especially when you're running a surface level train in the middle of a dense urban area.

Alternatively, you can just use normal concrete ties and then fill those over with soil and grass. This photo shows an example of concrete ties sitting on gravel ballast, but to add soil over that should not be a real challenge.

Ultimately, I guess the region just didn't want to spend the money doing something like this. The ION is basically a dollar store LRT. But anyway, this is more infrastructure related and not on topic for this thread.

[ac3r]

Any meaningful discussion on green tracks should have been had 10 years ago when the LRT was being planned. This current discussion is simply another opportunity for ac3r to bitch about something.

Cry more. It's the internet lol.