The Sentinel | 24m | 6s | Arlington Street | Jackson McCormick

this lot was mostly a parking lot, just out of sight in the rear. quirky building but it wasnt maintained and that corner was essentially a ghetto of failed businesses and had been for years. think everyone wanted a better project but its definitely going to be an improvement. adding a couple hundred residents hopefully increases the vitality of the surrounding area.
 
1875 said:
that corner was essentially a ghetto of failed businesses
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No way was Bex Vintage a failed business. Or the Tiba store on the corner. And the stamp store, and the snowboard shop next door (which had the parking lot behind it) had been open for years.

Businesses like that are not going to return to this corner for a very long time.
 
badc0ffee said:
No way was Bex Vintage a failed business. Or the Tiba store on the corner. And the stamp store, and the snowboard shop next door (which had the parking lot behind it) had been open for years.

Businesses like that are not going to return to this corner for a very long time.
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Living in Ottawa now, I am struck by the fact that the downtown/inner city here has many more small businesses and niche/quirky shops than downtown/central Calgary. I feel that losing smaller and older buildings such as the ones here contributes to the type of businesses which are viable in inner-city Calgary.
 
Drilling those re-enforcement rods into (what appears to be 17ave definitely could’ve hit a water line. I’m sure they have located the utilities before doing that. You never know what you. Could hit though
 
Drove by this site the other day and was genuinely surprised how large the site is now that it is all excavated. They probably could have easily done two point towers on the site but I can also see how the 6 story woodframe makes sense to maximize the lot coverage.
 
If i could have done it my way, i would have still demo'd the whole site, as the buildings were in rough shape. But i would have rebuilt the cool old blue building in the same style, with a podium, and two residential towers set back from the street. One ~6 stories and one ~10 stories, with the same swoopy blue facade.

Replace the smaller commercial buildings on the west of the site with some varying simple brick facades thats breaks it up as it was before. I never had much issue with the area, but the buidlings were falling apart and it just became an eyesore unfortunately


Theres a big issue in this city with landlords just letting neat old buildings fall apart. I with there was some way the city could enforce a certain standard of maintenance on buildings so we could avoid this. Can't afford to maintain the buidling? Then sell it to someone who can and actually cares.
 
This is just such a missed opportunity. Varying the materials, colours and massing a little more to break up the massing better - like we see with Broward, or some of the buildings in University District - would have really helped on this site.
 
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