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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

darwink said:
If you are going to take road capacity away, and not take away parking, the system will be pushed towards failure. Calgary for decades has not removed road capacity as it has developed active transportation and transit, creating a balance instead of setting up fights, and it has served us well.

Calgary does have a policy that restricts the amount of parking in new developments, with a policy goal of keeping the number of parking spots flat to stop the roads from being pushed into failure. The city does this partially by requiring contributions to the parking reserve fund, and then the city decides when and where to build more, but never builds an equivalent number of spots. The city has relaxed this a bit with some new developments but the policy remains.

Including parking does not equal including enough parking to increase overall capacity. Equating reduced overall downtown office vacancy with reduced parking utilization is a misnomer. The market adjust prices to equalize at a similar amount of parking utilization.

The point I was attempting to make was that there is no window of opportunity to make changes now that would be politically unacceptable at other times.
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The City has taken away road capacity for active modes, the cycle tracks were all implemented at the loss of a lane of traffic. Not a bad trade off, but still, road capacity was reduced.

And, the policy of limiting parking spaces has been dropped in 2017. It was the cash in lieu requirements for downtown office towers, where they were only permitted to build 50% of their bylaw required parking, and pay into a city managed fund for the remaining amount. The city adjusted the boundaries over the years, but essentially came to the conclusion they were not charging enough to cover the full amount of parking being restricted on a one for one strategy with the City built intercept lots. Plus, as future technologies take hold, big expensive parking structures are seen as a very risky venture right now, as you can sink a lot of capital into what will quickly become an obsolete building.

So, in 2017, Council dropped this policy, and gave developers the freedom to choose. Build your bylaw required amount, or you can voluntarily contribute to the cash in lieu fund I think. Section 6.1.3 of the Council Parking Policies gives a great overview of the history of this program, and where it is at today:
http://www.calgary.ca/CA/city-clerk...licy-library/TP017-CalgaryParkingPolicies.pdf
 
Yet the policy overall remained, which has capped the number of spots.

As for the cycle tracks, I’d argue they do not take capacity, that their layout explicitly is inside a cordon of bottlenecks around downtown. To take capacity away at bottlenecks (like initial visions of the green line did) is politically untenable.
 
Have we seen this project yet? https://www.cascadeyyc.com/

The building looks great, but it's in a really bizarre location for retail; right at the dead end of Richmond Street. It's great density for the area (the 26 AVE BRT stop is steps away). It's just really tucked out of sight for retail.

1500w


1500w
 
It's across from Viscount which is poised for significant redevelopment, so retail might not be bizarre as it seems.
 
KitCwVH.jpg


Aspen's Palliser One reclad was finally presented and is proceeding over the next 18 months. The existing crumbling and discolored 1968 material, insulation, air gap, etc. will all be removed as they basically demolish the outside of the building and then repanel all the way up.
 
So basically their plan is to just smash different diets of feces all over this building and call it an improvement? Christ almighty, how can the city let this bad of a design go through?
 
UrbanWarrior said:
So basically their plan is to just smash different diets of feces all over this building and call it an improvement? Christ almighty, how can the city let this bad of a design go through?
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I talked to Gibbs Gage and the original plan of a glass curtain/enclosure was 3 times more expensive than just cladding. I guess anything is an improvement over having the building fall apart? There's already green netting on the corners as pieces have been falling off. Hard to believe this building was white when brand new! It's just another tragedy of the brutalist era that created the buildings around our icon - the Calgary Tower.

KitCwVH.jpg
vs
293612-Large-fullheightview-from-the-northwest-on-a-summer-afternoon.jpg


This below older design from Gibbs has also been canned for the rest of the Palliser complex due to the downturn in the economy and the rest of the Tower complex will probably be just getting their own cosmetic finishes which may not integrate or match. They will probably end up with some ugly cladding too. Too bad these aren't feasible in the economy: https://www.gibbsgage.com/portfolio/palliser-east-west

Palliser-Street-View_Daytime_web.jpg
 
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Skyfire said:
KitCwVH.jpg


Aspen's Palliser One reclad was finally presented and is proceeding over the next 18 months. The existing crumbling and discolored 1968 material, insulation, air gap, etc. will all be removed as they basically demolish the outside of the building and then repanel all the way up.
Click to expand...
This might actually look worse than what it is now, extremely disappointed.
 
I'm not a fan of the colors involved in the Palliser One re-clad. I understand the need to replace the facade...maybe they can stick to one color? I don't see any combo of colors that would look good. Either cutain wall, which would be too expensive, or stick to one color, maybe one color and an accent color.
 
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