West Village Towers | 149.95m | 42s | Cidex Group | NORR Dubai Yahya Jan

General rating of the project

  • Great

    Votes: 9 7.7%

  • Very Good

    Votes: 17 14.5%

  • Good

    Votes: 42 35.9%

  • So So

    Votes: 15 12.8%

  • Not Very Good

    Votes: 15 12.8%

  • Terrible

    Votes: 19 16.2%
  • Total voters
    117
I'm sure they just keep dragging out the DP until they decide to actually build the tower. You can keep a permit active for years if there is promise of something happening eventually.
 
jianxia15 said:
Went to the No Frills the other day. It is not big, but does the job. They had some good deals, like for coke and olive oil.
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I visited recently as well. I was expecting this No Frills to act more like a Shoppers - where there's a convenience premium to the prices - but it seems they have priced things right in line with regular superstore sale deals. Selection is obviously less than a traditional big-box, but for all your basics it will blow away Co-op, the next closest option that comes with more of a premium. Huge win for the area for sure.

My visit also got me thinking - the LRT free-fare zone is bookended by two cheap grocery options now. With so much residential conversions going on, plus a high existing population in the west end, perhaps the corridor will start attracting more "normal" retail as downtown sheds some the dominance of the 9-5 office crowd in more and more places.

All this bodes well to boost the urban vibe of the city centre, so it's a 24/7/365 kind of place with more and more people living in the core to take advantage of an increasingly convenient lifestyle thanks to new retail, and surprising level of affordability thanks to more and more stuff being in a "zero transportation cost zone" thanks to walking and LRT access.
 
CBBarnett said:
I visited recently as well. I was expecting this No Frills to act more like a Shoppers - where there's a convenience premium to the prices - but it seems they have priced things right in line with regular superstore sale deals. Selection is obviously less than a traditional big-box, but for all your basics it will blow away Co-op, the next closest option that comes with more of a premium. Huge win for the area for sure.

My visit also got me thinking - the LRT free-fare zone is bookended by two cheap grocery options now. With so much residential conversions going on, plus a high existing population in the west end, perhaps the corridor will start attracting more "normal" retail as downtown sheds some the dominance of the 9-5 office crowd in more and more places.

All this bodes well to boost the urban vibe of the city centre, so it's a 24/7/365 kind of place with more and more people living in the core to take advantage of an increasingly convenient lifestyle thanks to new retail, and surprising level of affordability thanks to more and more stuff being in a "zero transportation cost zone" thanks to walking and LRT access.
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Same with the Freshco that just opened in West Hillhurst, prices are in line with larger FreshCo, with really no convenience premium. With the smaller footprint and stocking the highest sales items probably helps to increase the sales/sqft to make up for the rent differences.
 
Understand the relationship between Cidex and Aimco has turned pretty negative. Deal severely underperformed compared to what Cidex told Aimco (I think a common theme with Cidex projects)
 
CBBarnett said:
LRT free-fare zone is bookended by two cheap grocery options now… perhaps the corridor will start attracting more "normal" retail... in a "zero transportation cost zone" thanks to walking and LRT access.
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I would hope so, but right now the LRT corridor itself is 12 blocks of featureless streetscape. Theoretically there are plenty of businesses, hotels, and parks along there, but you don't see anything enticing when riding the free fare zone.

I don't know how it could be rehabilitated, but I feel the LRT ramps are a problem. A lot of cities went with low-floor LRTs that are level with street, sidewalk, and buildings when downtown, e.g. Portland OR and San Francisco. They make it much more pedestrian friendly downtown. I'm sure this is a tough sell, although some cities went through an expensive conversion to low-floor, e.g. San Diego and Salt Lake City. A lot of these places have cafes and street dining on wide sidewalks, and pedestrians stroll across the tracks all the time, since they're empty most of the time. Why should tracks with 2% occupancy be no-crossing zones?

I don't think that's the whole thing though, the business entrances in the zone don't feel very inviting. The parks are barely visible from the train or sidewalk. You have Core shopping, a successful mall, right there but hidden from view.
 
AK452 said:
I would hope so, but right now the LRT corridor itself is 12 blocks of featureless streetscape. Theoretically there are plenty of businesses, hotels, and parks along there, but you don't see anything enticing when riding the free fare zone.

I don't know how it could be rehabilitated, but I feel the LRT ramps are a problem. A lot of cities went with low-floor LRTs that are level with street, sidewalk, and buildings when downtown, e.g. Portland OR and San Francisco. They make it much more pedestrian friendly downtown. I'm sure this is a tough sell, although some cities went through an expensive conversion to low-floor, e.g. San Diego and Salt Lake City. A lot of these places have cafes and street dining on wide sidewalks, and pedestrians stroll across the tracks all the time, since they're empty most of the time. Why should tracks with 2% occupancy be no-crossing zones?

I don't think that's the whole thing though, the business entrances in the zone don't feel very inviting. The parks are barely visible from the train or sidewalk. You have Core shopping, a successful mall, right there but hidden from view.
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I think most conversions to low floor have street car like systems, where the station is a bit like a Max station, so high floors were not accessible, and all they needed was purchase new trains. Toronto went through a similar conversion. But I'm not sure a city which has built high floor stations with accessible ramps, have torn them down to redo as low floor.
 
AK452 said:
I would hope so, but right now the LRT corridor itself is 12 blocks of featureless streetscape. Theoretically there are plenty of businesses, hotels, and parks along there, but you don't see anything enticing when riding the free fare zone.

I don't know how it could be rehabilitated, but I feel the LRT ramps are a problem. A lot of cities went with low-floor LRTs that are level with street, sidewalk, and buildings when downtown, e.g. Portland OR and San Francisco. They make it much more pedestrian friendly downtown. I'm sure this is a tough sell, although some cities went through an expensive conversion to low-floor, e.g. San Diego and Salt Lake City. A lot of these places have cafes and street dining on wide sidewalks, and pedestrians stroll across the tracks all the time, since they're empty most of the time. Why should tracks with 2% occupancy be no-crossing zones?

I don't think that's the whole thing though, the business entrances in the zone don't feel very inviting. The parks are barely visible from the train or sidewalk. You have Core shopping, a successful mall, right there but hidden from view.
Click to expand...
There's always trade-offs, but I think the high-floor platforms do a reasonably good job, especially how they are the whole sidewalk wide. As much as building integration isn't always perfect, the number of users and how busy 7th Avenue every day suggest to me that perhaps it's not as big of a problem as you are suggesting. The Core for example has 2 stops pretty much integrated into it at 4th Street (via a dedicated plus-15) for WB trains and 3rd Street for EB trains.

If there's an improvement that can be made on the 7th Avenue platforms, its removing 95% of the random poles, signs and clutter they inexplicably made part of the design when the system was rebuild 10 years ago. Countless choke-points and blind corners were created for no real benefit.

This diagram will be difficult to interpret because I did a bad job, but essentially we should move all poles, shelters and bins out of the way from the train loading area, or integrated it into the harder-to-move structural supports of the larger station canopy. I don't even know what those shiny utility boxes are but 100% chance they don't have to be located in the passenger loading zone as they are now.

Removing all the clutter would solve what you are after I think, better integration and visibility into surrounding land uses. 95% of what's on a typical 7th Avenue platform doesn't need to exist I think:
1769190367585.png


More broadly, your comparison systems really aren't that comparable. The LRT volume (in number of trains and number of passengers) is far higher on 7th than these examples, and at higher-speeds. We are practically running volumes approaching a light metro here, but at-grade. The low-floor/high-floor debate is interesting if starting from scratch (and the associated pros/cons of building integration and street design), but the volume of trains will mean that we should be removing at-grade crossing expectations, not adding them IMO.
 
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