Oliver | 121.3m | 35s | Centron | Gibbs Gage

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I LOL every time I see that stupid park on top of that parkade. I mean, credit for trying something different and attempting to make use of a useless structure, but who the hell wants to hang out on top of a parkade in plus 35 degree weather?
or minus 35 lol
 
Here is a thought, could that parkade on 10th be capable of supporting a couple short residential towers (say another 5 to 10 stories)? If they converted the ground floor to hold some retail bays, left the next 4 floors or however many there are as parking for residents, and then built a couple small rental condos on top, it could potentially be a big game changer. Not sure the feasibility on it, but if it is possible, that is a good way to start transforming downtown from a parking wasteland into more density. It would save time and money because they would not need to excavate or build any below or above ground parking, it would be ready to go. They would probably need to punch in a couple elevator shafts and then go up from there.
 
IF they wanted to convert to residential, it wouldn't be too hard to shore up[ the structure. The long rumored change for that building was ground floor retail, would love to see that happen.

With the park on top, do they ever get food trucks up there? if you find a way to bring more people into the space it might be more successful than the hidden "park" it is currently.
 
would be a good spot for a beer garden, though their neighbours scross the street wouldnt agree
Assuming there is no interest just to tear down our parkades, it would be great if they made the top floor into an actual park too - like with plants. This is not a critique of the pop-up project as that was always intended to be super quick and cheap, but would be cool in a full project to actually take a whole top floor of asphalt out of the heat island and go all out with trees, grass and wind breaks and some solar protection. Either as a park or a greenhouse.

I don't know much about structural loads and requirements so I am imagining some retrofits required - but they were able to make a go with rooftop greenhouses on old warehouses in Montreal, surely the parkade could support something similar.

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1. Build a second floor to the overhang that connects the parkade to gulf Canada Square so that cars don't have to drive through the park from the ramp off 9th ave to get to the ramps on the south side of the parkade.
2. Build glass greenhouse over top of parkade.

They could keep one ramp from the parkade below that is accessible trough a garage door to allow food trucks into a small section of the park
 
Here is a thought, could that parkade on 10th be capable of supporting a couple short residential towers (say another 5 to 10 stories)? If they converted the ground floor to hold some retail bays, left the next 4 floors or however many there are as parking for residents, and then built a couple small rental condos on top, it could potentially be a big game changer. Not sure the feasibility on it, but if it is possible, that is a good way to start transforming downtown from a parking wasteland into more density. It would save time and money because they would not need to excavate or build any below or above ground parking, it would be ready to go. They would probably need to punch in a couple elevator shafts and then go up from there.
Typically structures are only designed for the loads they will see, extra capacity isn't built in (unless for example they plan for it, like Arris). If they changed the use of the parkade floors to something else, there would be some extra capacity from the reduction from cars to people, but not enough for a whole building on top.

You'd probably have to excavate underneath and strengthen everything, like a top-down foundation approach but on an existing building. It's possible, but probably not worth just starting from scratch given that GC's don't really do that in Canada.
 
Gateway Midtown was to the south of this, it became the Centre 10 office building. The site under construction now was originally planned as an office building similar to Centre 10, but is now residential. They started construction on Gateway Midtown, but the developer (Resiance)went bust and it sat for a few years before Centron (I think) took it over and finished. I think there were 7 levels of parking underground as part of the Gateway project and the city wanted them to close off the bottom few levels to keep under the maximum allowed, pretty sure they kept all the parking available.
 
Gateway Midtown was to the south of this, it became the Centre 10 office building. The site under construction now was originally planned as an office building similar to Centre 10, but is now residential. They started construction on Gateway Midtown, but the developer (Resiance)went bust and it sat for a few years before Centron (I think) took it over and finished. I think there were 7 levels of parking underground as part of the Gateway project and the city wanted them to close off the bottom few levels to keep under the maximum allowed, pretty sure they kept all the parking available.
Weird how the current developments Oliver and Centre 10 are almost a swap of the original Gateway and Place 10.
 

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