That's exactly what I was thinking. Either way though, I'm just looking forward for another tall tower outside of the downtown core. From certain angles it might even bridge the SAIT and U of C skylines.
Houston has plenty of tall buildings out of the downtown core and it is hardly considered a model for good urban form or vibrancy-inducing design. Height in itself is a poor criteria.
It's all about use, location and street interface. Height is useful in the sense it gets you more "use" (i.e. density). But if you don't interface that density properly, or choose a location that is inappropriate, you've wasted a lot of potential. In this case, the location is perfect in a macro, top-down, plan view sense for student housing. However, that's ignoring some real problems.
The site is 1.6km from SAIT, 1.2 km from U of C. Not particularly far, but imagine walking to them. SAIT would be a rough 20minutes along the noisy, dirty 16th Avenue complete with a sound wall for a third of the journey. U of C is even worse as there is no direct connection. My guess the quickest walk would be over the McMahon ped overpass and through the parking lots to University Drive. Do-able sure, but long, boring and unpleasant. Forget bicycling, as the connections are non-existent. Repeat this exercise of how you would walk to places for all your other daily needs (groceries, bars, entertainment etc.) For being centrally located, it's one of the worst areas in the northwest for any of those things. Transit connection are slightly better, but again there are problems. First it still is 350m walking distance to the Banff Trail station. Second, that's assuming you are taking the alley. Again, do-able, but unpleasant and unattractive. It is not hard to see many students feeling uncomfortable and unsafe with such options walking, cycling or transit.
What you end up with is creating more of the same: auto-oriented students, driving from Banff Trail to SAIT and U of C. Sure it's better that they drive from here than Skyview Ranch, but it's hardly what you want if the goal is a more vibrant and urban future for the area.
Of course, most of these connectivity issues are not the development's fault or responsibility. However, their design clearly leans into it and propagates another boring, unattractive main-level, with little to indicate that it will integrate well at all with a more urban future of the motel village. Even if the whole area redevelops amazingly with attractive designs and pedestrian-orientation, this building will be an odd one out, with no pedestrian interface, surface parking and poor orientation to its surroundings.
TL/DR: I am ok with the height, but the area's terrible connectivity combined with the poor street-level design makes this a big missed opportunity.
It is a TOD if there ever was one. Also, we haven't even seen what the parking availability will be in this building yet, but I'm certain it won't even be one per unit, let alone two. Be realistic.
