417 King St W | 55 fl | Proposed

[ZEBuilder]

This was not approved tonight at the Planning and Strategic Council meeting. It is now being deferred to the next council meeting. The reasoning behind this is that there is some issues that are related to the regional airports flight path so NAV Can is involved, they are hoping this issue is resolved in time for next weeks meeting. Someone on here probably knows more in terms of the reasoning but this project is nowhere near the AZR of the airport so I can't see how the flight path of the airport is affecting it but it somehow is. TEK Tower didn't have any issues related to flight paths that I remember so this seems to be a rather peculiar situation and staff didn't elaborate on it. I could see 50 Borden having issues with the flight path considering it is right next to the AZR (maybe why it hasn't come to council yet) but this is definitely one of the more interesting reasons for a development to get a deferral.

Edit: I rewatched the section about the deferral and the following was said "staff are waiting on further information and details from NAV Can on potential impacts to the regional airport flight path." So there might not be issues, but considering staff haven't mentioned flight paths before makes it seem like there is some kind of issue.

[ac3r]

Highly unlikely there are any actual issues as there are other towers a stones throw away that are around the same height, but they probably wanted to ensure there would be no issues at all before giving it the rubber stamp.

[Bjays93]

The F was specifically chosen to send a strong signal to the NIMBYs. Get F'd!

Joking obviously, but the tower looks fine. I don't know why this forum seems to dislike it. If you could see a physical model of it or additional renders I think you guys would like it more.

The design is as bland and uninspired as could possibly be. 

I don’t see what you think is so exceptional about it tbh. Does it have the potential to be higher quality than most of what else is around here? Sure, but that’s not a particularly high bar and this is a building that is really going to stand out.

[westwardloo]

The F was specifically chosen to send a strong signal to the NIMBYs. Get F'd!

Joking obviously, but the tower looks fine. I don't know why this forum seems to dislike it. If you could see a physical model of it or additional renders I think you guys would like it more.

The design is as bland and uninspired as could possibly be. 

I don’t see what you think is so exceptional about it tbh. Does it have the potential to be higher quality than most of what else is around here? Sure, but that’s not a particularly high bar and this is a building that is really going to stand out.

I don't hate it, but it's nothing special. I am sure it will be better then the TEK tower. 

funny that ac3r is defending this tower, but shit on the design of Phase 3 of Station Park, which is much more unique in my opinion.

[Bjays93]

The design is as bland and uninspired as could possibly be. 

I don’t see what you think is so exceptional about it tbh. Does it have the potential to be higher quality than most of what else is around here? Sure, but that’s not a particularly high bar and this is a building that is really going to stand out.

I don't hate it, but it's nothing special. I am sure it will be better then the TEK tower. 

funny that ac3r is defending this tower, but shit on the design of Phase 3 of Station Park, which is much more unique in my opinion.

I agree 100% but I didn’t want to sound antagonistic lol.

[ac3r]

We'll just agree that nobody here has any taste in design. :'P

Joking, naturally, it's all subjective anyway. Without wasting the time to write a huge post about the nuances of this building, I find it unique and I guess it helps that I've seen a lot more of it than anyone here has. In comparison the revised design of Station Park E looks like some generic creation DALL·E shat out using a "tall curvy glass skyscraper condo" prompt.

[CuilTard]

I watched the recording (last 15 minutes of https://pub-kitchener.escribemeetings.co...3a1761a24a)

A few things that stood out to me:

• The vote was deferred to Nov 6 meeting to wait for NavCan report on YKF flight path impact
  
• Council were in a hurry to end this 6.25 hr meeting so no questions
  
• There were a bunch of nice new renderings (interior and exterior) presented. Agreed with ac3r that it looks better/fine in other renders. 
  
• Bit of detail about their sustainability goals which sounded promising. 
  

[ZEBuilder]

There was no reason provided but this has been delayed again this time to the December 11th council meeting. Presumably NAV Can hasn't worked out the issues they have with the height of the building yet.

[jeffster]

There was no reason provided but this has been delayed again this time to the December 11th council meeting. Presumably NAV Can hasn't worked out the issues they have with the height of the building yet.

Unsure why Waterloo Regional Airport flightpaths would be an issue here. It's about 8.5 KM from the edge of the runway, and not exactly a straight flightpath either.

In contrast, Billy Bishop in Toronto is 750 meters from tall buildings (not in the flightpath either).

Where I live is fairly close to the flightpath (as in a straight line), 9 KM roughly from airport, and at that point, the 737's are still fairly high in the air.

So, these commercial passenger airliners need to descend at a rate of at least 1,500 feet per minute minimum. They are travelling about 300 kph during that time. That works out to 5 km per minute. This means, if a passenger airplane were to descend over 417 King St West, its minimum distance from the ground would be 2,550 feet (minus 80 feet, see next (italics)) Even if we're generous with this build, say at 12' per floor, its height would be 660' (plus 80 feet elevation above the airport, as 417 King St is 1096 feet above sea, while the airport is at 1017 feet) or about 1,820 below the airlines flightpath. Again, those are minimums. An airline could be 2x the height and still be able to land safely.

You literally could build a duplicate CN Tower on that property and have zero interference on any airline.

It's not complicated math. Unsure how this is even an issue. Obviously someone complained and now they have to do their "due diligence" but damned if someone at City Hall can't figure that this isn't an issue, well, SMH.

[ZEBuilder]

There was no reason provided but this has been delayed again this time to the December 11th council meeting. Presumably NAV Can hasn't worked out the issues they have with the height of the building yet.

Unsure why Waterloo Regional Airport flightpaths would be an issue here. It's about 8.5 KM from the edge of the runway, and not exactly a straight flightpath either.

In contrast, Billy Bishop in Toronto is 750 meters from tall buildings (not in the flightpath either).

Where I live is fairly close to the flightpath (as in a straight line), 9 KM roughly from airport, and at that point, the 737's are still fairly high in the air.

So, these commercial passenger airliners need to descend at a rate of at least 1,500 feet per minute minimum. They are travelling about 300 kph during that time. That works out to 5 km per minute. This means, if a passenger airplane were to descend over 417 King St West, its minimum distance from the ground would be 2,550 feet (minus 80 feet, see next (italics)) Even if we're generous with this build, say at 12' per floor, its height would be 660' (plus 80 feet elevation above the airport, as 417 King St is 1096 feet above sea, while the airport is at 1017 feet) or about 1,820 below the airlines flightpath. Again, those are minimums. An airline could be 2x the height and still be able to land safely.

You literally could build a duplicate CN Tower on that property and have zero interference on any airline.

It's not complicated math. Unsure how this is even an issue. Obviously someone complained and now they have to do their "due diligence" but damned if someone at City Hall can't figure that this isn't an issue, well, SMH.

Yeah it's certainly a strange situation, I couldn't find any logical reasoning behind it since it is no where near the AZR so I ended up asking a friend of mine who has their pilot license about why it's happening. The answer I got was that there must be a minimum of 500' of clearance between a plane and the tallest building in an area but generally 1000' is the minimum height to fly over any area, obviously there are exceptions like landing, sparsely populated areas, water, etc. All the building's we've had so far are shorter than 500' tall so it means that the restriction to the airspace is still below that 1000' mark, now this building, 50 Borden, Station Park Phase 3 are all over 500' tall meaning the minimum height to fly would then be above 1000' which requires NAVCAN to adjust all of their restrictions, with the restriction being then above 1000' it means that it could potentially push the restriction into a different class of airspace so NAVCAN basically has to verify that everything would still work.

Obviously that is just speculation from the knowledge of a pilot since they didn't have the flight restriction maps with them at that point but even they found it to be rather strange. However, it definitely seems like a reasonable justification for why NAVCAN is delaying it and could explain why none of the other projects over 50 floors have gotten approval yet. 50 Borden was original supposed to go to council in September but that never happened and it seems reasonable to think that NAVCAN is part of the reason for that as well (that is also much closer to the AZR).

[panamaniac]

I don't know who raised the issue, but I imagine it's just a matter of due diligence. Not the kind of thing you want to learn about after the building goes up!

[neonjoe]

It could be worse

https://www.mississauga.com/news/council...7d124.html

[jeffster]

Unsure why Waterloo Regional Airport flightpaths would be an issue here. It's about 8.5 KM from the edge of the runway, and not exactly a straight flightpath either.

In contrast, Billy Bishop in Toronto is 750 meters from tall buildings (not in the flightpath either).

Where I live is fairly close to the flightpath (as in a straight line), 9 KM roughly from airport, and at that point, the 737's are still fairly high in the air.

So, these commercial passenger airliners need to descend at a rate of at least 1,500 feet per minute minimum. They are travelling about 300 kph during that time. That works out to 5 km per minute. This means, if a passenger airplane were to descend over 417 King St West, its minimum distance from the ground would be 2,550 feet (minus 80 feet, see next (italics)) Even if we're generous with this build, say at 12' per floor, its height would be 660' (plus 80 feet elevation above the airport, as 417 King St is 1096 feet above sea, while the airport is at 1017 feet) or about 1,820 below the airlines flightpath. Again, those are minimums. An airline could be 2x the height and still be able to land safely.

You literally could build a duplicate CN Tower on that property and have zero interference on any airline.

It's not complicated math. Unsure how this is even an issue. Obviously someone complained and now they have to do their "due diligence" but damned if someone at City Hall can't figure that this isn't an issue, well, SMH.

Yeah it's certainly a strange situation, I couldn't find any logical reasoning behind it since it is no where near the AZR so I ended up asking a friend of mine who has their pilot license about why it's happening. The answer I got was that there must be a minimum of 500' of clearance between a plane and the tallest building in an area but generally 1000' is the minimum height to fly over any area, obviously there are exceptions like landing, sparsely populated areas, water, etc. All the building's we've had so far are shorter than 500' tall so it means that the restriction to the airspace is still below that 1000' mark, now this building, 50 Borden, Station Park Phase 3 are all over 500' tall meaning the minimum height to fly would then be above 1000' which requires NAVCAN to adjust all of their restrictions, with the restriction being then above 1000' it means that it could potentially push the restriction into a different class of airspace so NAVCAN basically has to verify that everything would still work.

Obviously that is just speculation from the knowledge of a pilot since they didn't have the flight restriction maps with them at that point but even they found it to be rather strange. However, it definitely seems like a reasonable justification for why NAVCAN is delaying it and could explain why none of the other projects over 50 floors have gotten approval yet. 50 Borden was original supposed to go to council in September but that never happened and it seems reasonable to think that NAVCAN is part of the reason for that as well (that is also much closer to the AZR).

And the funny thing about the Borden project - it's right beneath the flightpath. But as I said, for these large commercial planes, they have a minimum and maximum descend rate, 1500' per minute to 3,000' per minute. At that point, the airplane is about 7.5 km from landing and 1.5 minutes of travel time, it puts it at a minimum height of 2,250 feet, to a max of 4,500'. Again, almost enough for a CN Tower in that spot.

Due diligence, maybe? But this shouldn't be difficult to figure out.

[panamaniac]

Yeah it's certainly a strange situation, I couldn't find any logical reasoning behind it since it is no where near the AZR so I ended up asking a friend of mine who has their pilot license about why it's happening. The answer I got was that there must be a minimum of 500' of clearance between a plane and the tallest building in an area but generally 1000' is the minimum height to fly over any area, obviously there are exceptions like landing, sparsely populated areas, water, etc. All the building's we've had so far are shorter than 500' tall so it means that the restriction to the airspace is still below that 1000' mark, now this building, 50 Borden, Station Park Phase 3 are all over 500' tall meaning the minimum height to fly would then be above 1000' which requires NAVCAN to adjust all of their restrictions, with the restriction being then above 1000' it means that it could potentially push the restriction into a different class of airspace so NAVCAN basically has to verify that everything would still work.

Obviously that is just speculation from the knowledge of a pilot since they didn't have the flight restriction maps with them at that point but even they found it to be rather strange. However, it definitely seems like a reasonable justification for why NAVCAN is delaying it and could explain why none of the other projects over 50 floors have gotten approval yet. 50 Borden was original supposed to go to council in September but that never happened and it seems reasonable to think that NAVCAN is part of the reason for that as well (that is also much closer to the AZR).

And the funny thing about the Borden project - it's right beneath the flightpath. But as I said, for these large commercial planes, they have a minimum and maximum descend rate, 1500' per minute to 3,000' per minute. At that point, the airplane is about 7.5 km from landing and 1.5 minutes of travel time, it puts it at a minimum height of 2,250 feet, to a max of 4,500'. Again, almost enough for a CN Tower in that spot.

Due diligence, maybe? But this shouldn't be difficult to figure out.

I agree that it's not difficult but the NAVCAN bureaucracy may be slow in responding.

[ZEBuilder]

Like we were thinking the delay had to do with the airport runways. From the NAVCAN report it says that during construction Runway 26 will be affected "Runway 26 departure climb gradient, must be increased to 270 FT/NM, After the crane is removed the climb gradient will remain and lowered to 220 FT/NM to clear the building". There are also very specific coordinates on where the tower crane can be located on the site due to this. Before the tower crane goes up and comes down VanMar has to submit more documentation for review by NAVCAN.

Maximum tower crane height: 235.135m
Tower crane coordinates: 43 27 8.1036, -80 29 49.9848

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