Stephen Avenue Quarter | 241m | 66s | Triovest | Gibbs Gage

YourBoy007 said:
Being a conservative has nothing to do with this.
#VoteSmith

Edit: Wow! That skyscraper page looks hard to navigate.
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It’s where most of us came from and used to be a tight knit community. Then trolls like you took over and now it’s a ghost town.

Btw I just ordered my NDP sign.
 
O-tac said:
It’s where most of us came from and used to be a tight knit community. Then trolls like you took over and now it’s a ghost town.
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Chill out. People you disagree with aren't trolls bro. I'm never too serious on this forum -- which is a great forum btw.
 
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But like literally you are a troll. You spent your first 6 months on this forum doing nothing but trolling until you finally started contributing now and then. Either way, still a troll, and a conservative shill to boot. Just cringe all around. Everything you say and delude yourself into believing is nauseating to those of us with a conscience.

Stigmatizing people with mental disorders in that post is proof of that. I’d wager far more mentally ill people support the UCP than the NDP. Those mentally ill who support the NDP are merely treated for it and acknowledge/deal with their issues. Absolutely pathetic fool, please leave.
 
YourBoy007 said:
Chill out. People you disagree with aren't trolls bro. I'm never too serious on this forum -- which is a great forum btw.


Great! Now you can advertise your mental disorder from your front lawn.
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You’re the one who called me by name and joked I lost my virginity in the heritage buildings on 7th ave. Otherwise why could I possibly care about the last remaining full block of historic buildings in the city right? Funny to hear a ‘conservative’ mock others for wanting to actually conserve our history.

Also funny to hear someone who supports the batshit, horse dewormer hawking talkshow host Premier call anyone who supports the sane and competent leadership of Rachel Notley’s NDP mentally ill. As if the last 5 years of endless corruption, scandals, incompetence and erosion of everything from our parks system to healthcare wasn’t enough. But I know, the war in Ukraine leading to sky high oil prices was all the doing of the brilliant leadership of the UCP, right? And the global downturn in 2014 was all Rachel Notley’s fault.

The thing is even if you want cool tall buildings and don't value old 2 story buildings, this project still sucks because the design is bland and the office building was a stubby box.
 
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This project seemed bizarre from inception:
-market for office space unlikely to recover for a long time
-internal courtyard replacing the alley would be cold and dark most of the year
-less than appealing location for a large residential project
-out of scale with surrounding development

I'd much rather see one or two small towers replace the decayed 7th Ave side, booked ended by the church and Palomino, some form of pedestrian realm in the alley and new bujildings replacing Winnders (which is faux historical) and the brutalist Thai restaurant building.
 
It would be nice if they could restore the buildings on 7th ave, but I would be okay with a few smaller buildings built on the parcel. My biggest opposition is for reasons mentioned above, like being out of scale for surrounding development, cold and dark internal courtyard, and of course the office space. Even if they don't go ahead with the office portion, it's still a large monolithic podium that further detracts from a downtown already filled with large soul sucking podiums.
I could live with a couple of thin residential towers on the 7th ave side, but don't ant to see anything on the Stephen Ave side. Just leave it be.
 
DougB said:
This project seemed bizarre from inception:
-market for office space unlikely to recover for a long time
-internal courtyard replacing the alley would be cold and dark most of the year
-less than appealing location for a large residential project
-out of scale with surrounding development

I'd much rather see one or two small towers replace the decayed 7th Ave side, booked ended by the church and Palomino, some form of pedestrian realm in the alley and new bujildings replacing Winnders (which is faux historical) and the brutalist Thai restaurant building.
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I never really got this project either - it almost seems like a relic from another era of urban development in Calgary. Most of my opinions haven't changed since my previous post on this, but every time this one is in the news it almost feels like the developers don't really know what asset they have, don't know what makes their location a good one for particular types of development, nor really what's the strong motivation to develop that would produce a strong and coherent development vision.

Either that, or their business case is dependent on a obsolete styles of development to make economic sense on paper so they can't propose something more appropriate as the math works on outdated development models only.

The focus on office and the mega-podium was always bizarre, but also all this heritage stuff - isn't it the same group that was developing the parking garage here years ago that got rejected for similar heritage reasons? Is anyone surprised that heritage would be a big issue for this project with all it's national, provincial and municipal designations and the decade of previous discussions on it? Obviously that has to get sorted out and wrapped into a compelling vision for the project, and it doesn't seem they have really come close - more ignore it than anything.

It almost has the arena debate vibe - proposals that don't appear to make a ton of sense from the outside, a large amount of public interest, weird one-off articles in the Herald about the project, breadcrumbs of clues that point towards a preference for 1980s Calgary designs.
 
Just to confirm, the parking garage received Council approval, based on the fact they got heritage designation on the 7th Ave properties (facades and first 20' of depth I think), amongst other things. The project lost at the appeal board due to an open to interpretation condition about handling garbage bins in the alleyway. The people who appealed were the owners of the buildings across the laneway.... so Triovest I think.......
 
MichaelS said:
Just to confirm, the parking garage received Council approval, based on the fact they got heritage designation on the 7th Ave properties (facades and first 20' of depth I think), amongst other things. The project lost at the appeal board due to an open to interpretation condition about handling garbage bins in the alleyway. The people who appealed were the owners of the buildings across the laneway.... so Triovest I think.......
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Ah thanks for clarifying - and Triovest later acquired the whole parcel by taking over the parking garage site I assume?

Maybe this is the kind of history that every parcel has but we just don't typically talk about or the public isn't aware of the details , but even in this example sounds like another symptom to this whole site - weird site with unique history, leading to a weird parking garage proposal that lost on appeal by the future owners, leading to yet another weird proposal by those future owners.

Heritage is a common theme all along, but so has largely minimizing or ignoring heritage parts of the project in favour of something boring and conventional - a parking garage or office tower mega-podium. Apart from some superficial nods, neither proposal leaned into the location near Stephen Ave at the heart of pedestrian Calgary as the thing they were trying to build the vision around.
 
O-tac said:
You’re the one who called me by name and joked I lost my virginity in the heritage buildings on 7th ave. Otherwise why could I possibly care about the last remaining full block of historic buildings in the city right? Funny to hear a ‘conservative’ mock others for wanting to actually conserve our history.
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So you're telling me the fanfic I immediately came up based on the original post involving a drunken college night where you and a nameless paramour mistakenly wandered into the old stock exchange building igniting your love of heritage buildings is not at all based on reality?!? My whole world is shattered. It seemed so specific it had to be true.
 
There's a huge surplus in office space. The condo market is showing signs of an impending boom but it's not quite there yet. The rental market vacancy rate isn't low. Lots of room for intensification. How is acknowledging the heritage properties holding Calgary back?

Calgary has one of the most impressive North American skyline. Tall buildings are abundant. 100 year old blocks of buildings are not. That has to be considered. Layers of history are important to the urban experience. It's one of the things Burnaby or Mississauga cannot recreate as they densify their urban centres over the next 50 years.
 
I don't think the heritage buildings are beyond saving.
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Here's what we should do:
Take out that wide, unnecessary bus pullout, and put the buses on another avenue (with new priority infrastructure for them there). And then replace that pullout with extended sidewalk space, and a bunch of planters with flowers to form a pretty barrier between the sidewalk and the tracks. It would be a super easy way of turning the vibe from destitute and unsafe to pretty and urban.
 
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