Solo on 4th | 16.76m | 5s | Indevelopments | Indevelopments

I hope the project falls through and construction does not start. I hate this project so much in its current form. Demo and clean up the site and leave it as a parking lot until something better comes along.

Also, 4th street could use an overhaul. The condition of the streetscape is not much better than stephan Ave.
 
Signage going up; man I miss the original proposal!
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This is extremely unfortunate. It's not even on par with other developments in the neighbourhood, let alone the quality that should be demanded on our main streets. What a boondoggle.
 
The Familia said:
I hope the project falls through and construction does not start. I hate this project so much in its current form. Demo and clean up the site and leave it as a parking lot until something better comes along.

Also, 4th street could use an overhaul. The condition of the streetscape is not much better than stephan Ave.
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This. I'd rather 4th street and 17 ave still be empty than the piece of crap single storey building. There's still hope! Development Permit still currently under review....
 
I do wonder if this project would look better if it just used a better rendering software other than Google Sketchup. Ignoring it's uglyness due to cheap rendering it does a lot of things right: retail facing 4th street, continues a tight streetwall but with a set back on the street to avoid being over-bearing.

The north face is a weak point with few windows or any activation (hard to tell given the poor renderings). The yellow, white and retail stone work are all risky and could age poorly; again hard to tell as they are the default colour selections in Sketchup so who knows what they will look like when built. Do we know what the materials are?

Similarly with the streetscape; default Sketchup items. Hell, they even placed the same across the street - which doesn't even have trees right now and has Calgary's standard collection of incoherent and inconsistent signs and signals, random pavement and bricks, and of course a bunch of random street furniture all haphazardly lying around. By our low standards, any developed that paves a whole block with the same pavement type is batting above average.

TL/DR: the rendering doesn't leave me with much hope because I assume if a developer can't draw a good building, they likely can't build one. This is an assumption; I have been wrong before. But so much of the issues seem to be things that haven't been detailed at all in any picture and could easily look entirely different in reality. Overall it does many basic things well enough - if the goal is to build an urban high-street with a mix of uses, pedestrian-orientation and at medium/higher density.
 
I'd much rather that than see what is proposed get built.
 
Stephen Ave said:
I noticed last night that the site is still idle. I hope they didn't demo and put up construction fencing only to have it sit that way for years.
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I remember that the development one block to the south(I think it's called 20/20 or something) stood vacant for several years with boarding around it. I remember the CA was furious with the developer.
 
Social Justice said:
I remember that the development one block to the south(I think it's called 20/20 or something) stood vacant for several years with boarding around it. I remember the CA was furious with the developer.
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We called it the Mission Hole, IIRC it was around for the better part of a decade. When I was younger it sparked my interest in pedestrian accessibility due to being a large reason that for nearly 2 decades you couldn't walk from the Elbow River to the Bow River on 4th Street SW without being forced to change sides at least once (sometimes up to 3 or 4 times) due to construction hoarding and general ignorance to all things pedestrian in this city (at that time, with some improvement since both in attitude, policy and execution).
 
Yeah, it was probably decade before it was finished it off. The first developer - Ingersoll - started demoing the buildings that were there in 2005 IIRC. A burger joint, and Greek place...possibly the restaurant called the Kremlin. I can't remember the businesses except that they were all individual little buildings. It sat an empty lot for a while, then they excavated for a while before going bankrupt, then another developer came in, did a bit of work and went bankrupt also. Strategic took it over in 2009 IIRC, and then started construction in 2011.
 
Urb said:
Some interesting history there. I remember going to Burger Inn when it was still in that location. Every 10th burger was free!
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I thought that might be the name of the burger place! I went there a couple of times. I'm having trouble remembering what businesses were there and what it actually looked like.
 
That was for sure there, and I have a particular memory from that place. Back when I first moved to Calgary, I went on a blind date, and we met up in Mission, walked around the area for a while and I offered to go in somewhere and have a coffee. I randomly picked Kremlin, and we went in. The only people there were a group of Russian guys with black leather jackets. They all stopped talking and stared at us until we left. lol.

Surrealplaces said:
Yeah, it was probably decade before it was finished it off. The first developer - Ingersoll - started demoing the buildings that were there in 2005 IIRC. A burger joint, and Greek place...possibly the restaurant called the Kremlin. I can't remember the businesses except that they were all individual little buildings. It sat an empty lot for a while, then they excavated for a while before going bankrupt, then another developer came in, did a bit of work and went bankrupt also. Strategic took it over in 2009 IIRC, and then started construction in 2011.
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