Francesco's | 48m | 16s | Arlington Street | DAAS

IMO, Fifth and The Windsor turned out very well, except for the quality of material, and with an upgrade of material and they would go from good to great. Outside of the that, both have been wins in my book, as they check off all the boxes. Both have good street interaction, and fit into their surroundings very well, even improving the surroundings. The good streetscape design could be why the CRU's of both projects are fully leased, and if the they do the same with this one, I'll be happy.
 
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Surrealplaces said:
Hopefully. IMO, Fifth and The Windsor turned out very well, except for the quality of material, and with an upgrade of material and they would go from good to great. Outside of the that, both have been wins in my book, as both are fully leased with good street interaction. Every time I go past Fifth, the corner is buzzing with people.
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Just about to say the same thing the Fifth project at the corner of 5 Street and 17 Ave is a massive win - it's main critique is the quality of the materials (bricks are always more tasteful it seems). From a use and design perspective it's about as slam dunk for retail/main street project as we have seen in Calgary. If they get around to planting those street trees and they do well in the coming years, that whole corner will integrate perfectly.
 
Surrealplaces said:
IMO, Fifth and The Windsor turned out very well, except for the quality of material, and with an upgrade of material and they would go from good to great. Outside of the that, both have been wins in my book, as they check off all the boxes. Both have good street interaction, and fit into their surroundings very well, even improving the surroundings. The good streetscape design could be why the CRU's of both projects are fully leased, and if the they do the same with this one, I'll be happy.
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Agreed, Arlington has also stated that they are only leasing out to smaller locally owned buisness, which seems to be true in all of their developments so far. Thats huge for 17th as the high rent prices can lead to a street of banks and chain restaurants
 
MichaelS said:
Planning Commission agenda is now up, including the documents for this land use application:
Report, Background, Proposed DC Bylaw, Applicant Submission, CA Letter

The CA is objecting to this change, and the letter is 17 pages long (I didn't bother reading it all.....).
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I read through it quickly, the TL;DR is:
  • Lack of engagement with community
  • Eliminating existing affordable housing (~20 units).
  • Density is too aggressive, proposal is a FAR of 6.0 (5-storey podium + 15 storey tower). CA wants to see 3-6 storeys.
  • Impacts on parking & traffic
  • Lack of "community amenities/benefits"
  • They want surface parking on 5A street
  • They want Inset balconies
All in all it seems like pretty standard NIMBY stuff. Let me know if anyone sees anything important that I missed.
 
Lack of community engagement
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Bro, that is so vague and such a poor excuse that it really draws bias against the rest of your arguments............. which are all lame too btw.

  • Density is too aggressive, proposal is a FAR of 6.0 (5-storey podium + 15 storey tower). CA wants to see 3-6 storeys.
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I'd love to show these people density.
 
MichaelS said:
The CA is objecting to this change, and the letter is 17 pages long (I didn't bother reading it all.....).
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Did a quick skim of the CA letter myself...
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Note this is a premade NIMBY BINGO card I googled; this wasn't made for this specific project or even this specific city.

Mission/Cliff Bungalow is half full of people who want to live in South Beltline and half full of people who want to live in North Rideau Park; the CA seems to have more of the latter than the former.
 
So far - and without seeing much in the way of detailed renderings yet - this development appears about as sensitive of an intensification as you can get, given it's shoved far to the north of the community while still having the height set far enough back it shouldn't be too impactful to 17 Avenue patio sun exposure at the Ship and Anchor (the one true planning metric that is non-negotiable).

As more of a thought exercise, I will try to be a bit sympathetic to Mission-Cliff Bungalow's position. Ignoring the basic fear-mongering stuff (e.g. parking/traffic) Mission-Cliff Bungalow is kind of a unique community for redevelopment where it's almost completely surrounded by ultra-low density and extremely wealthy communities of Roxboro (south), Elbow Park (south west), and Upper Mount Royal (west), with zero redevelopment or intensification within them. These surrounding communities also generate much of the traffic that is a concern within the Mission area. At the same time, each of these surrounding neighbourhoods have been historically more successful at attracting public funding for traffic calming, and have a fairly impermeable road networks to outsiders as a result.

Meanwhile Cliff Bungalow's 5th Street SW - a far busier and less safe street than any of the streets of the richer neighbourhoods that were redesigned and invested in over the past decades - remains a dangerous mess. It also appears that no amount of development seems to be able to trigger a similar response to widen sidewalks, extend the cycling infrastructure, slow traffic cutting through to the richer areas to the south. So there's a very local argument to be constructed that all the development activity goes in one area, but most of the quality-of-life improvements go to another.

Of course - most of these issues and inequities between Mission-Cliff Bungalow area and the surrounding neighbourhoods don't have anything to do with this specific development, and therefore shouldn't be attached to this development's perceived benefits/drawback. But they are real influences on the community's local politics, context and perceptions of fairness when it comes to development.

The one thing that the scale of the Fishman's development will achieve is lock in a substantial supply of apartments that will help keep the neighbourhood more affordable in the long-run. A much less obvious form of development has long been negatively altering the Cliff Bungalow's character in the form of mansion spill-over from Upper Mount Royal. Many blocks of the neighbourhood have typically been older houses-converted-into-apartments that offer substantial unique and affordable ground-oriented urban living options for decades. Many of those same houses are converting back to single family homes or being torn down completely in favour of $1.5M+ single-family heritage homes. The neighbourhood is so small that it doesn't take many luxury redevelopments to displace much of the existing population base.
 
Brevity has to matter here. If you can't put forth a quality argument in something that's reasonably readable and easily digested you really don't have a case and are filling space for dramatic affect.

The outer portions of inner city Calgary are pretty fascinating to me, as indicated by CBBarnett, they've managed to fulfill the goal of turning portions of the neighborhoods into Superblocks that can work so well in so many different ways, while maintaining or decreasing their density.

In so many ways we want similar things (Superblocks, more quiet human-scale streets, etc.), but in other ways, they live on a completely different planet.
 
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Full resolution renders (at least on my phone 🤷🏻‍♂️)


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Fishmans-Ground-2-1200x800.jpg

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