Varsity Mixed Use | 25.91m | 6s | City of Calgary | MBAC

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Surrealplaces said:
I know this one gets a lot of hate, but it does the job, and is a big improvement over what was there before. The telephone poles look ghetto, but at least they bury some of them.
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My main critique isn't about the looks of this building.

My issue is that it's that it's wildly land inefficient, and unlike nearly every affordable housing projects in the country outside of Calgary - has a greater than 1 stall / unit parking ratio. These factors work together of course, but to give everyone their demands, we end up with a bloated, forgettable site where over half of it is surface parking. There's ~60 stalls here supporting the fire station and residents. That's enormous given the size of building and expected use.

As an affordable housing location, this site is so good apparently we are assuming residents will need to own at least one vehicle with that parking ratio. On lower income segments vehicle ownership is financially impossible, even for the next income segments up it's a large portion of income. What's our affordability goals that support this site as opposed to a better location?

This site's access to parks, transit and grocery stores are cited as reasons this location is "good" - really? Brentwood LRT park-and-ride (or any number of nearby stations) isn't better? It's also city-owned and closer to all three of those things and has far superior transit.

Logic should hold up in reverse too - if this is so good, why do we need the parking at all - fit another 100+ units on the parking lot.

The ultimate final design that decommissions the existing fire station for a park space is also underwhelming - a park on windswept arterial with a unneeded slip lane eating into the site. There's many better parks and green spaces within 400m of here. We gave up the corner, and with it the only real opportunity to one day better connect the development in a walkable way to University District and shops, jobs and retail nearby.

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So it's a miss for me - design and style are fine as a building, but the some choices on location and site design seem contradictory to the stated objectives of doing this thing in the first place.
 
The parking lot is bigger than it needs to be. They could’ve made the building 60 units with 44 parking spaces instead of the reverse. Outside of that, it fits the bill for what you could expect for that type of location.
Maybe they could’ve done better with the corner facing 32nd Ave. but there’s there’s already a setback in place and tbh there isn’t anything remotely interesting or walkable or interesting 32nd Ave. it’s a typical suburban Boulevard.
You’d be surprised how many low income people have vehicles. That’s probably what this development was geared for.
I’d be very disappointed if this was in an inner city neighborhood somewhere but it’s a suburban build in a suburban location.
 
It’s close to university District, but outside of that there’s nothing urban about the area. I’m mostly referring to 32nd ave in general, not being an urban feeling street in any way, I mean there isn’t even a continuous sidewalk on both sides of the avenue.
I agree with CB Barnett about the parking, there could’ve been less parking and more units, but the lack of urban context for this project isn’t something I’m going to lose sleep over. If this was on University Avenue, 19th st or 24th Ave I would feel differently.
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JWhite said:
It’s close to university District, but outside of that there’s nothing urban about the area. I’m mostly referring to 32nd ave in general, not being an urban feeling street in any way, I mean there isn’t even a continuous sidewalk on both sides of the avenue.
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And this was a significant opportunity to change that context that was missed.

It's most frustrating here because it's not an imaginary thing plopping a well designed development into the middle of nowhere. University District directly across the street proved appetite for high-density urban walkable design in what was an empty suburban field for 50+ years previously. They've already built 100x the units as this development with 100x more planned to go. There is an absolutely provable case to build a better, denser design here.

Why did University District propose such a dramatic change from the existing suburban context in the first place? Because the development recognized being adjacent to the second largest employment hub in the city, near major hospitals, roads and malls, and being only 5km from downtown in a city of 2 million people is a valuable place to create something more than just fitting the context.

This development may recognize it's existing context at the superficial level, but woefully misses it's actual future context and the significant more opportunity that would come from that.

It's the catch-22 in design that led to a contradiction:
  1. If it's a great location for affordable housing - great! You don't need the parking, build 2 to 3x the housing. University District proves the area can support high density and car-free housing choices already so it's a perfect match.
  2. If it's not a great location for affordable housing and you think we might need surface parking to make viable for people - build the affordable housing where it is better suited for car-lite and car-free housing (e.g. next to Brentwood LRT station on similarly city-owned land) and then turn this into a University District style development which has been proven viable here. Result is still more housing, no surface parking and everyone gets a better location closer to their stated needs.
The design hedges that it's both a good and bad location for affordable housing - it contradicts itself. We think the location is good enough for housing, but not good enough to be able to reduce surface parking. Which makes no sense if the goal is long-term affordability where car-free and car-lite households are a prerequisite. Nor does it make sense with what the market demand is suggesting is appropriate housing density and design in this area.
 
Beltline_B said:
It would be nice if 32nd had some sort of overall plan to make it into a more urban style road. The university has come up with some nice plans for a university district and university innovation, quarters, but there doesn’t seem to be any plan for 32nd other than to leave it as it is.
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Both 32nd and 24th avenues demand a redesign. It's not a hard problem to solve here as there is ample room coupled with a demand for walking and wheeling plus slower traffic speeds with the many pedestrian crosswalks
 
Col du Edworthy said:
Both 32nd and 24th avenues demand a redesign. It's not a hard problem to solve here as there is ample room coupled with a demand for walking and wheeling plus slower traffic speeds with the many pedestrian crosswalks
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One of my favourite examples of 1970s transportation engineer over-building hubris is a full-block dedicated turn lane to support a total of 14 houses on a cul-de-sac on 24th Ave N.

Not every intersection needs a cross-walk, but we definitely need a 30 to 40 car turning capacity to support 14 houses! 10/10, no notes.

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Closer to this development, one of the city's pointlessly land consumptive right turn slip lanes on low traffic roads, eats into the site's land here for no reason, no benefit, nor any process to ever fix this design mistake in the future.

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