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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

Weird roof lines
I don't really get why we have so much facade articulation and weird roof pitches on infill low-rise residential. IMO I'd much prefer a owning a boring, efficient, easy-to-maintain box with a normal roof. As a DIYer, I could probably learn how to repair a boring normal roof with only 2 planes, I definitely would be forced to hire someone for a weird, 8 or 10 plane, multi-angle roof with all sorts of intersection points and joints. It's like we are trying to make housing expensive, more likely to be built incorrectly and make it harder to maintain.

Instead of all those random angles and extra corners, I'd save all the effort to apply better materials to the exterior.
 
I don't really get why we have so much facade articulation and weird roof pitches on infill low-rise residential. IMO I'd much prefer a owning a boring, efficient, easy-to-maintain box with a normal roof. As a DIYer, I could probably learn how to repair a boring normal roof with only 2 planes, I definitely would be forced to hire someone for a weird, 8 or 10 plane, multi-angle roof with all sorts of intersection points and joints. It's like we are trying to make housing expensive, more likely to be built incorrectly and make it harder to maintain.

Instead of all those random angles and extra corners, I'd save all the effort to apply better materials to the exterior.
100% agree. You could have a single sloped roof line from back to front or vice versa and nobody would notice the difference from a visual point of view, but the single sloped roof line would be so much easier to maintain. The only part of the building people will notice is the front facade.
 
TBH, I don't think the design would have come to fruition as shown in the renders anyway, so I'm not too disappointed.
You're probably right. Even some of the opposition to the Inglewood development admitted it's beautiful. Given the dramatic council meeting on this project, RNDSQR at least needed to match the renderings. They were probably disappointed to realize they couldn't cut costs on the architecture and pull the ol' switchayoo on the community.
 
It's like we are trying to make housing expensive, more likely to be built incorrectly and make it harder to maintain.
People who make the rules or influence the process typically have little to no sense of what are cost drivers in development. Urban design panels are bad for this. Non-statutory plans also. Rooflines, articulation, setbacks, setbacks, floor plate size recommendations, recommendations that contradict. Some of these, especially around parking have faded from the forefront thankfully.
 
Looks like Arlington Street Investments is shedding some assets (thank god). Carrying cost for some of their empty buildings on 17th Ave must be huge. Hopefully an actual real developer buys some of these...

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An article from Vancouver but may help explain why there have been fewer new apartment tower starts in Calgary than “we” would like
(Spoiler - higher interest rates and rising construction costs):

It also links to this related article from August:
 
Remington is looking at converting the Quarry Park Stonehenge into a residential project.

View attachment 521886
some notes from the open house:
- Intent is to reuse the built 3-storey parkades and elevator/stairwell cores for the development
- Approx. 1100 units, "vast majority rental"
- Landscaped site edges to remain and improved
- Above-ground parkade structure on the north end of the site is no longer going forward, will be developed as residential building
- Single DC land use divided into 3 sub-areas:
A: 2 storeys/10m
B: 4 storeys/18m
C: 8 storeys/29m, in addition to a maximum of two point towers up to 13 storeys/42m
- Point towers required to fully utilize the existing parkade structure of almost 1k stalls. 8 storey buildings are the maximum height able to be supported by the parkade.
- Intent to submit DP for the three 8 storey buildings above the parkade before land use approval


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- Landscaped site edges to remain and improved

The zone A buffer is to ‘buy’ rapid approval. The stalled project likely had it too.
Most of it is already even landscaped, has been for years.

This is on top of a fourth 13 story tower at Deville by the Coop in Quarry park, more 13 story towers north of Les Jardins and some mid/low rise product there as well. The city also has some TOD rezoning further north on 24st by the traffic circle, and there's a project further south off 114 by another developer across the street from the bus / future green line station as well. Remington is also holding onto those parcels by the river for some low rise multifamily as well. Ecco has also stated plans for future TOD with their landfill removal that's undergoing zoning approvals now as well.

So overall there's quite a bit of residential on the books for this area, easily 3000-4000 more units.
 

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