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General University Area Updates and Rumours
(09-08-2021, 06:20 PM)Waterlooian4life Wrote: Does anyone know what is happening at King and Hickory? The site is cleared and a bunch of houses are boarded up but I haven’t heard of any projects.
I've been by there. Pretty sure there's a sign across the road with some sort of building render. Don't know if they're related. I asked pretty much the same thing in the general waterloo rumours thread and got no response
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Lots of action now on the King/Hickory site. They demolished another house/building last week and there's now an excavator digging on the entire site. A construction office has also been added. Very surprised that there is nothing to be found on this project. The site is rather large, so I find it hard to believe there are no Zone Change applications, etc. This site is so large it could easily accommodate two towers with a large podium.
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They installed a crane base yesterday at the Hickory/King/Regina site. Considering there's no zone change application, no digging for underground parking, this thing will probably be another cheap University district puke project.

Hope I'm wrong though. This area could use improvement.
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(12-24-2021, 10:05 AM)Watdot Wrote: They installed a crane base yesterday at the Hickory/King/Regina site.  Considering there's no zone change application, no digging for underground parking, this thing will probably be another cheap University district puke project.

Hope I'm wrong though.  This area could use improvement.

This is a tall one by Prica I'm pretty sure. Weird that the plans are not available anywhere...
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^ 25 floors for this

‘ The City has issued a building permit for a 25 storey mixed use building on this site at 308 King Street North so that’s what you are seeing under construction. There will be ground floor commercial space facing King, Hickory and Regina Street with all 340 residential units on storeys above the ground floor. The vehicular access is off Regina Street - all parking is interior to the building.’

No plans available to the public because there was no zone change. So that is different apparently then what we are used to seeing.

Commercial on ground floor should be a nice touch to this canyon of on student towers imo
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If it’s by Prica, expect it to be the same boring/cheap looking designs at all their other buildings, including 203 Albert.
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(01-04-2022, 05:25 PM)Lebronj23 Wrote: ^ 25 floors for this

‘ The City has issued a building permit for a 25 storey mixed use building on this site at 308 King Street North so that’s what you are seeing under construction.  There will be ground floor commercial space facing King, Hickory and Regina Street with all 340 residential units on storeys above the ground floor.  The vehicular access is off Regina Street - all parking is interior to the building.’

No plans available to the public because there was no zone change. So that is different apparently then what we are used to seeing.

Commercial on ground floor should be a nice touch to this canyon of on student towers imo

Thank you for the info! They are installing the crane today.
I do agree that the ground floor commercial will "help", but I am also sure it will look like another gross University District slab.
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Not sure if these have been mentioned on here or not, but I came across these two projects on Martin Simmons' website:

Waterloo Innovation Network - at Columbia & Phillip 
https://www.martinsimmons.ca/projects/wa...on-network
[Image: EXTERIOR_AERIAL_A_NIGHT_00.jpg?w=3000]
[Image: EXTERIOR_AERIAL_C_00.jpg?w=3000]
[Image: EXTERIOR_PERSPECTIVE_A_02.jpg?w=3000]

446 Albert Street - at Albert & Phillip on the site of the former Steelcraft site
https://www.martinsimmons.ca/projects/446-albert-street
[Image: MartinSimmons_446-Albert_ExtEntrance_HR0004.jpg?w=3000]
[Image: MartinSimmons_446-Albert_Aerial_HR0002.jpg?w=3000]
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Those are both years old and, as far as I know, not actually going to happen anytime soon.
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(01-15-2022, 04:52 PM)CP42 Wrote: Not sure if these have been mentioned on here or not, but I came across these two projects on Martin Simmons' website:

[Image: MartinSimmons_446-Albert_Aerial_HR0002.jpg?w=3000]

Finally, surface parking for 100s of cars a 2 minute walk from an LRT station
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(01-15-2022, 05:29 PM)GtwoK Wrote: Finally, surface parking for 100s of cars a 2 minute walk from an LRT station

It's closer to ten minutes, but it's still a fair point.
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Some surface parking is still necessary, though ideally it should be in a garage. Not everyone lives within a range of transit that makes it sensible to use. Many people commute from out of the region as well.
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(01-17-2022, 03:44 PM)ac3r Wrote: Some surface parking is still necessary, though ideally it should be in a garage. Not everyone lives within a range of transit that makes it sensible to use. Many people commute from out of the region as well.

53% of Kitchener residents live with in 7km of their work, 49% for Waterloo, and 85% of homes are a 400m or less from a bus stop.

Those stats would seem to indicate that the large majority of people have a living situation for which transit is very sensible, bit in terms of availability of transit and trip time.
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(01-20-2022, 01:32 PM)Bytor Wrote:
(01-17-2022, 03:44 PM)ac3r Wrote: Some surface parking is still necessary, though ideally it should be in a garage. Not everyone lives within a range of transit that makes it sensible to use. Many people commute from out of the region as well.

53% of Kitchener residents live with in 7km of their work, 49% for Waterloo, and 85% of homes are a 400m or less from a bus stop.

Those stats would seem to indicate that the large majority of people have a living situation for which transit is very sensible, bit in terms of availability of transit and trip time.

My guess of 1/3 to 1/2 wasn't so far off the mark. Smile
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So that leaves roughly half of 620'000+ people who don't live in walkable or transit friendly areas. That's nothing to feel good about.

A good chunk of that 53% could still live along bus routes that only run every 30 minutes which is not viable for many people who may have to rely on things like assisted mobility, who are elderly, who have children and families to care for, who work multiple jobs and need as much time as possible or who may only have painted bike lanes to make biking a potential. You can't just look at statics and numbers you know.
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