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General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours
The website photo would seem to suggest it will be in Waterloo.
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(06-22-2022, 01:18 PM)Bytor Wrote: Quick question approximately how much does it cost to build one of the 25 storey towers?

Varies depending on hundreds of factors (floor size, design, geotech, etc.), but roughly $70,000,000 just in hard construction costs
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(06-23-2022, 09:01 AM)KaiserWilhelmsBust Wrote:
(06-22-2022, 01:18 PM)Bytor Wrote: Quick question approximately how much does it cost to build one of the 25 storey towers?

Varies depending on hundreds of factors (floor size, design, geotech, etc.), but roughly $70,000,000 just in hard construction costs

And this is why I still find the 100M for our transit terminal to be an insane cost. Yes, it's a different beast, but it's also orders of magnitude smaller in scale. A 25 storey condo building takes more raw materials and more labour to build, no question.
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(06-23-2022, 08:31 AM)westwardloo Wrote: I hope they seriously consider the AUD lands for the Hospital. Still a central location, easy access to the highway and although not right beside the LRT it is relatively close. I am happy they are finally realizing St. Marys and Grand River can not serve the regions hospital needs for the future 50 years. The region has had to rely on london or Hamilton for any major surgery, which might have been ok when we were a region of 250,000 people but we will be a metro of 1 million soon after this hospital is built. A red flag on the little information we have is the Hospital is looking fo 60 acres of land. So I would assume they will land in either the industrial lands of north cambridge, south kitchener or near rim park. with a sea of parking surrounding the hospital instead of a parking garage and no reasonable transit connection.

60 acres? What would they ever do with that much land? That is a square 492m on a side!

OK, OK, sea of parking. But I mean, in the context of reasonable urban design?

Keeping in mind that a large city should have multiple hospitals, so “expansion” isn’t an answer: you expand by opening additional locations. They are aware of the existence of technology for building multiple levels of a building, one above the other?
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I suspect wherever they build it, they'll try to make it as close to an LRT station as possible. Hundreds of the staff rely on the LRT to get to work so putting it way out in the suburbs would be a huge inconvenience to staff. But I'm not sure where they could get that much land in a more central location. The Aud location would suffice, but then we'd lose The Aud (and no, it cannot be rebuilt at Charles Street so don't even...). Maybe they'll be hoping that the LRT extension to Cambridge would be completed by the last 2030s? Lots of room near Sportsworld then but then you make accessing the hospital for those in Waterloo a pain in the ass and Cambridge still has a hospital that recently had a fairly large upgrade as well.
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The only thing that might justify 60 acres would be if they are contemplating a site that could also accommodate a future School of Medicine, or space for other medical services/ industries. The site of Ottawa’s (much larger) new Civic Hospital is 50 acres, which provides space for an enormous parking garage and several future office towers.
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(06-23-2022, 06:43 PM)panamaniac Wrote: The only thing that might justify 60 acres would be if they are contemplating a site that could also accommodate a future School of Medicine, or space for other medical services/ industries.  The site of Ottawa’s (much larger) new Civic Hospital is 50 acres, which provides space for an enormous parking garage and several future office towers.

Wouldn’t be shocked if UW was interested in pursuing this. They also own probably the largest amount of undeveloped land in the city on their “north campus”.
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(06-23-2022, 06:46 PM)DCP42 Wrote:
(06-23-2022, 06:43 PM)panamaniac Wrote: The only thing that might justify 60 acres would be if they are contemplating a site that could also accommodate a future School of Medicine, or space for other medical services/ industries.  The site of Ottawa’s (much larger) new Civic Hospital is 50 acres, which provides space for an enormous parking garage and several future office towers.

Wouldn’t be shocked if UW was interested in pursuing this. They also own probably the largest amount of undeveloped land in the city on their “north campus”.

It would be a fabulous thing for K-W, but my development ideas tend to be in technicolor ...
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(06-23-2022, 06:46 PM)CP42 Wrote:
(06-23-2022, 06:43 PM)panamaniac Wrote: The only thing that might justify 60 acres would be if they are contemplating a site that could also accommodate a future School of Medicine, or space for other medical services/ industries.  The site of Ottawa’s (much larger) new Civic Hospital is 50 acres, which provides space for an enormous parking garage and several future office towers.

Wouldn’t be shocked if UW was interested in pursuing this. They also own probably the largest amount of undeveloped land in the city on their “north campus”.

The new President of UW is a widely respected public health scholar and 6-year CEO of Public Health Ontario - I think its a given they are working towards that and was actually more surprised they weren't in the original announcement, though I'm sure this is part of building the support up to it.

Here's a completely random 60 acres, just for a point of reference...

   
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(06-22-2022, 09:35 AM)Acitta Wrote: So, after years of reading approvingly in WRC about all the new condo developments in Kitchener that I couldn't possibly afford to live in even in my wildest dreams, I have decided to become a NIMBY after receiving official notice from my Doctor's office, conveniently located downtown at 550 King St. East., a 7-minute bike ride from home, that due to redevelopment they are moving to Eastbridge Blvd. in Waterloo, a 40-minute bike ride from home.

Things moving because of a lack of parking is really annoying. My optometrist moved from kind of far west to almost the Boardwalk. Grr.
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As of now, there is no hospital at all on the north side, so I do expect that's where the third (or fourth, depending on how you count) will go.
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(06-23-2022, 08:18 PM)cherrypark Wrote:
(06-23-2022, 06:46 PM)CP42 Wrote: Wouldn’t be shocked if UW was interested in pursuing this. They also own probably the largest amount of undeveloped land in the city on their “north campus”.

The new President of UW is a widely respected public health scholar and 6-year CEO of Public Health Ontario - I think its a given they are working towards that and was actually more surprised they weren't in the original announcement, though I'm sure this is part of building the support up to it.

Here's a completely random 60 acres, just for a point of reference...

That really does illustrate how gigantic 60 acres really is. Definitely unnecessary for just a hospital.

I think it would make sense on North Campus, but I doubt we'll see it. UW seems dedicated to extracting maximum value without regard for any social benefits from that land area.
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(06-12-2015, 10:17 AM)Owen Wrote:
(06-12-2015, 09:47 AM)BuildingScout Wrote: I'm afraid that even then it won't be enough, judging from other urban examples. We are going from 0 buildings to 1 (Kaufman) to 3 (Kaufman+One Victoria+City Centre) so while the increase sounds like a lot, density is still extremely low in that area as far as downtown urban districts are concerned. We will need the other City Centre tower as well as the two towers in One Hundred Victoria before we start seeing critical mass. The transit hub will help a lot as the fact that a trip to downtown will be a breeze away when the LRT is in place. Then we'll see a clear pickup.

This brings up my biggest issue with the LRT - "a trip downtown is a breeze away when the LRT is in place"  ... for who??  Maybe a few folks who happen to live around the line, but not for most residents of the city (and by most I mean everyone in Wards 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8).  I understand the planning rationale for creating a corridor that induces development (and a long-term shift in population from the suburbs to condos along that corridor), but I really wish the LRT as more useful for more existing residents - meaning it had lines that extended out into the existing suburbs to the east and west and made it easy for people to come downtown as a destination.  I get it - that was way out of the budget - but presently I have a hard time seeing how the LRT would help me get anywhere I want to go (have you ever found yourself on King street saying "gee, I really wish I could hope on a train and get to uptown waterloo?")  ... most of the city's residents (again, everyone in Ward 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8) live outside walking distance from the LRT, which means they will have to keep driving everywhere they want to go.   

Since the province is now providing 100% funding for this sort of thing we should be lobbying for a Phase II LRT that adds loops from the outer areas into the core to augment the main line!

(06-24-2022, 03:06 AM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(06-23-2022, 08:18 PM)cherrypark Wrote: The new President of UW is a widely respected public health scholar and 6-year CEO of Public Health Ontario - I think its a given they are working towards that and was actually more surprised they weren't in the original announcement, though I'm sure this is part of building the support up to it.

Here's a completely random 60 acres, just for a point of reference...

That really does illustrate how gigantic 60 acres really is. Definitely unnecessary for just a hospital.

I think it would make sense on North Campus, but I doubt we'll see it. UW seems dedicated to extracting maximum value without regard for any social benefits from that land area.
Now if the province would Grant UW an actual Medical School then they would definitely build on the North Campus...
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(06-24-2022, 08:09 AM)neonjoe Wrote:
(06-12-2015, 10:17 AM)Owen Wrote: This brings up my biggest issue with the LRT - "a trip downtown is a breeze away when the LRT is in place"  ... for who??  Maybe a few folks who happen to live around the line, but not for most residents of the city (and by most I mean everyone in Wards 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8).  I understand the planning rationale for creating a corridor that induces development (and a long-term shift in population from the suburbs to condos along that corridor), but I really wish the LRT as more useful for more existing residents - meaning it had lines that extended out into the existing suburbs to the east and west and made it easy for people to come downtown as a destination.  I get it - that was way out of the budget - but presently I have a hard time seeing how the LRT would help me get anywhere I want to go (have you ever found yourself on King street saying "gee, I really wish I could hope on a train and get to uptown waterloo?")  ... most of the city's residents (again, everyone in Ward 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8) live outside walking distance from the LRT, which means they will have to keep driving everywhere they want to go.   

Since the province is now providing 100% funding for this sort of thing we should be lobbying for a Phase II LRT that adds loops from the outer areas into the core to augment the main line!

(06-24-2022, 03:06 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: That really does illustrate how gigantic 60 acres really is. Definitely unnecessary for just a hospital.

I think it would make sense on North Campus, but I doubt we'll see it. UW seems dedicated to extracting maximum value without regard for any social benefits from that land area.
Now if the province would Grant UW an actual Medical School then they would definitely build on the North Campus...

Considering that UW hired a new Dean with a background in medicine, I don't think it's a stretch to think that they'd be interested in forming a med school if given the opportunity. 

I know it would be a terrible place for a hospital, but I can't help but look at the land adjacent to the new Schlegel Village/UW Institute for Aging as a location that could be considered. The land is basically 50% parking lots in the area already, so they'd probably welcome a few more /s
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(06-23-2022, 08:18 PM)cherrypark Wrote:
(06-23-2022, 06:46 PM)CP42 Wrote: Wouldn’t be shocked if UW was interested in pursuing this. They also own probably the largest amount of undeveloped land in the city on their “north campus”.

The new President of UW is a widely respected public health scholar and 6-year CEO of Public Health Ontario - I think its a given they are working towards that and was actually more surprised they weren't in the original announcement, though I'm sure this is part of building the support up to it.

Here's a completely random 60 acres, just for a point of reference...
I actually like this location for the new Hospital. It is close to the LRT, and could be incorporated into UW with research and medical technology labs. Not the most accessible by car, but at least it is not in some farm field on the edge of the city. If we could draw inspiration from Ottawa's new civic hospital that would be a win. https://reimagineottawa.ca/new-civic-hospital  Unfortunately it seems like everything the University of Waterloo builds has acres of surface parking lots.
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