CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
I could see why you would say this but I think it wouldn't be too bad.
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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
darwink
Senior Member
I did a bit of an exploration. the units are 28 foot frontage 1 beds at approximately 700 square feet. Blue is a 5 foot wide hallway. 24 units plus the corners. the ones fronting dead floorspace you add internal rooms: share light bedrooms, bathrooms, dens, storage. The upper floors get a dedicated yoga room that no one will use as an exclusive amenity (the room that is the elevators on lower floors).
Some quick finances: all other things being equal if you can rent the tower for $~25 a square foot+$15 operations and taxes, you stay office. Below that it really depends on the delta between office renovation costs, residential renovation costs, and relative occupancy.
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UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
Earnest question here, I don’t really understand the dynamics of residential conversion fully, but wouldn’t Nexen be perfect for a family-oriented affordable housing project? Bigger floor plates so bigger/wider units? Something like that?
darwink
Senior Member
'deep' floorplates create less efficient unit layouts rent per squarefoot wise. shared light bedrooms add less value than a second windowed bedroom.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
Absolutely. But I don’t imagine that’s a deal breaker, especially when we’re talking about subsidized affordable housing for families with multiple kids.
Not that this is a rumour or anything, but perhaps this is the super-sized replacement for Bridgeland Place?
Golfing guy
Active Member
I was just going to mention bridgeland place. The $100 mil for that could a long ways in renovation/conversion of Nexen placeAbsolutely. But I don’t imagine that’s a deal breaker, especially when we’re talking about subsidized affordable housing for families with multiple kids.
Not that this is a rumour or anything, but perhaps this is the super-sized replacement for Bridgeland Place?
ByeByeBaby
Active Member
A king-sized bed is seven feet by seven feet, which means it can't go into a room less than about ten feet by ten feet (or there won't be room to walk around it). A three-seat sofa is around eight feet wide; the viewing distance for a 60" TV is around eight feet, so a living room can't be less than... about ten feet by ten feet.
If you want windows on every bedroom as well as a living room, you need about twenty feet of windows for a one-bedroom apartment, or thirty feet for a two-bedroom (forty feet for a three-bedroom). You could cheat this down a little bit, but not terribly much, or the rooms start becoming less useful. And these are minimums; no one is going to be upset over a slightly larger room than typical.
With one dimension defined, the depth (the distance perpendicular to the windows) kind of falls out; if you have 25 feet of depth. then you have 500 sq ft one bedrooms and 750 sq ft two bedroom units (1000 sq ft three bedrooms), a little on the small side; at 30 feet of depth you have 600 and 900 (and 1200) sq ft respectively, a little more generous. At much more than 30 feet of depth, you start adding space that doesn't have any windows to match. You can use it for storage rooms, studies, home offices, or "shared light" bedrooms, that is, bedrooms without windows. With a "shared light" bedroom, you can put in windows or gaps that let some light come in from the windowed spaces, but that compromises privacy, or you can maximize privacy and result in a depressing bedroom. None of those are particularly attractive uses, so you wind up with a bunch of units that aren't particularly attractive as rental relative to their floorspace.
If you have 30 feet of windows and 40 of depth, you have either a 1200 sq ft two bedroom unit which will rent for a little more than a standard 900 sq ft unit (but not the 33% more the extra floorspace implies), or you have a standard sized three bedroom unit but one of the bedrooms doesn't have any natural light; so you wind up renting it for less than a standard three bedroom. If you make it public-owned affordable housing, you have to tell me why you think that poor people deserve living conditions that most people won't accept.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
Umm, lots of people accept bedrooms with “shared light”… like half the people living on the downtown peninsula of Vancouver, every single studio unit in Ink, N3, Park Central, and many others in this city. 1 bedroom not having natural light doesn’t at all equate to me “thinking thinking poor people don’t deserve windows” lmfao! 
like literally thousands of non-poor people choose these options. It’s one bedroom of three. Chill.
like literally thousands of non-poor people choose these options. It’s one bedroom of three. Chill.
haltcatchfire
Senior Member
One unit per floor solves all of those problems.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
25 grand per month directly into Gondek’s account.
ByeByeBaby
Active Member
Ah yes, downtown Vancouver, a housing market where everybody is famously thrilled with the amount of housing they are getting and where nobody feels like they are making compromises.Umm, lots of people accept bedrooms with “shared light”… like half the people living on the downtown peninsula of Vancouver, every single studio unit in Ink, N3, Park Central, and many others in this city. 1 bedroom not having natural light doesn’t at all equate to me “thinking thinking poor people don’t deserve windows” lmfao!
Studios are a very different context -- and a very good one for "shared light" -- since there's nobody else around to cause privacy problems; same with senior's housing. In a three bedroom apartment specifically intended "for families with multiple kids"? I don't think I would have wanted a bedroom where everyone in the living room could see into it during my teenage years; would you? The same way that having one bathroom is perfectly fine in a studio, but madness in a three bedroom. I think privacy's pretty important for children.CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
My brother had a condo in Seton. Three bedroom, one had no windows and no 'shared light'. It was playroom/office. There's also nothing like having a completely dark room in the middle of the day for young ones.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Forget if this was posted already, but the city is looking for feedback on the updated plan for 8th Street SW.
Sounds like an opportunity to update the 2016 plan to one more pedestrians focused. Get your comments in - particularly if you get as frustrated as me with random widths, poles, curb cuts, signs, debris, signal boxes, and general shabbiness of this important corridor
:
https://engage.calgary.ca/8StreetSW
Sounds like an opportunity to update the 2016 plan to one more pedestrians focused. Get your comments in - particularly if you get as frustrated as me with random widths, poles, curb cuts, signs, debris, signal boxes, and general shabbiness of this important corridor
:https://engage.calgary.ca/8StreetSW
FCC1982
Active Member
Does the City typically update plans that are only 6 years old ?
(Just asking - not criticizing)
(Just asking - not criticizing)
CBBarnett
Senior Member
I am assuming its case-by-case, but for the downtown and 8th Street there's a few factors that probably played a role of why bother relooking at a reasonably young plan. In particular, the 2016 plan was developed 2014-2015, shortly before the oil crash and the collapse of the downtown office market. This event triggered the whole downtown planning work and a bunch of spin-off programs investments (the office conversion program, Stephen Ave reconstruction etc.)
Such a change likely triggered a relook at 8th Street too. The existing plan contemplated a very difficult downtown environment, particularly on the west end. The west end is the ground zero for many of the obsolete office buildings/conversions so the context is quite different (not to mention substantial Beltline population growth since then). Happy they are relooking at it as the existing one still catered a bit too far towards the auto-commuter IMO.
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