Proposed Waterloo Commons | 20m | 5 fl

[Waterlooian4Life]

I am not sure if anyone else has seen this but I found it when I was visting waterloo in December and completely forgot to post it.

http://www.dtzbarnicke.com/Client/JJ...7!OpenDocument

[metropolis]

I am not sure if anyone else has seen this but I found it when I was visting waterloo in December and completely forgot to post it.

http://www.dtzbarnicke.com/Client/JJ...7!OpenDocument

Personally, I have not seen this so a big thanks!

This looks promising in that the considerable space occupied by parking could easily be converted into office buildings as demand warrants it and LRT comes online. In particular along the train track side of the development.

You do have to give credit to their efforts of creating a street presence, particularly along Weber and containing most of the parking on the inside of the development.

Also worth mentioning is the fact they don't seem inclined to knock down the existing structure completely and will repurpose it instead.

[Lugnut]

That's actually the former NCR property at 580 Weber St I believe. I think there's a thread for it.

[panamaniac]

That's a s***load of parking! Might help if those "future parking structures" could be moved up, but it still seems like a waste of land.

[ViewFromThe42]

I'm actually a bit disappointed here. If I'm not mistaken, it's the southeastern corner where there will be an LRT stop, and that's where there is the greatest concentration of parking, the least walking-accessible area, and the promise of parking structures to keep it from having workspace adjacent to transit.

[gomesjustin]

this is a step in the right direction. but I agree with ViewFromThe42. Terrible, Terrible use of the future LRT stop basically at your front door. Get rid of all the surface parking, and squeeze in some mixed-use, and make it enjoyable for the predestrians so it is lively throughout the day. (and maybe night?)

[KevinL]

I'm actually a bit disappointed here. If I'm not mistaken, it's the southeastern corner where there will be an LRT stop, and that's where there is the greatest concentration of parking, the least walking-accessible area, and the promise of parking structures to keep it from having workspace adjacent to transit.

It's also where the wedge-shaped property belonging to the fire station sits in the way of easy pedestrian access from this development to the station area. I do hope they work out better access vectors here.

[Razzie]

My thoughts on this - what if the parking structures were intended to be garages for people who wanted to use the LRT? They could make their owners a fair bit of coin if that were the case. As well, I'm looking at the 50,000 sq. ft. retail space on the property and wondering if Sobeys was considering a move across the street, given I've been told they're moving anyway.

[insider]

Can someone please remove 'mixed-use' from the project description? This is not mixed-use at all. Office and retail, maybe even hotel (which probably won't happen anyway), are all forms of commercial uses. This is simply another suburban business park, which fits perfectly with the rest of Waterloo.

[Lugnut]

Wow I never saw the site plan at the top. Hideous.

[zanate]

You know, it could be worse. And it still helps to build a destination at the Northfield LRT stop. It would be tough to lease out industrial/commercial buildings in this part of town without providing a lot of parking, because there isn't any walkable density here, there is a massive pedestrian and cycling barrier cutting off walkability to the east, and not everyone will ride the train to work.

Even if you provided twice the building footprint, that wouldn't be enough on its own to generate a vibrant streetscape around there. I worked half a block from there for 8 years and to me, this is enough of an improvement to satisfy my pragmatic side.

I do miss the baseball diamonds, though.

[Waterlooian4Life]

I do believe this location is going to be treated like some of Calgary's Park and Ride locations. where people can drive to the suburban transit stations park in some of the excess of parking and ride transit to the downtown and uptown cores and Tech park where the hope would be there are many more employment spaces. This gets more cars off the street in downtown locations and ideally shorter commute times for people.

That being said it is not the best example of ubran design but if this could be a replacement for northfield plaza and there is potential redevelopment on that site I would be happy...

[WatDot]

I'm not disappointed with this development. In my opinion this is a healthy thing. Indication that LRT is helping our City and Region... and it's not even built!! The developer obviously is expecting the LRT to help lease buildings, but at the same time recognize that our province/country is so auto-dependent that access to highway/parking is vital. LRT was step 1, this development is step 2, in 20-30 years step 3 with true mixed-use and density will happen when parking is less important. BUT, I agree with ViewFromThe42 right now. The land use nearest the LRT station and the fire station is silly. There should be better connection with the LRT station through building development, not parking lots/structures.

I'm actually a bit disappointed here. If I'm not mistaken, it's the southeastern corner where there will be an LRT stop, and that's where there is the greatest concentration of parking, the least walking-accessible area, and the promise of parking structures to keep it from having workspace adjacent to transit.

[garthdanlor]

I think it's a pretty ugly development with too much surface parking and a hotel proposal that is just thrown in there with little or no chance of ever being built. Saying that it is better than what currently exists on the spot, and is certainly no worse than the mess that surrounds a major rapid transit station such as Kennedy in Toronto. I think sometimes we are expecting too much change (or at least change to come too quickly) as result of our of our LRT, especially in a suburban spot like this. Kennedy has been around 30+ years and still the area looks like it does. Would I prefer a better development here? Damn right. And do I expect this area to be better than Kennedy currently is in 30 years? I certainly hope so. Still, sometimes I think we might need to temper our expectations as I just don't want the LRT to fail (or been seen as a failure) due to the weight of false expectations that we may have for it.

[BuildingScout]

I think it's a pretty ugly development with too much surface parking and a hotel proposal that is just thrown in there with little or no chance of ever being built.

The city is in dire need of hotel space. I'm curious as to why you think it would never happen. City council opposition? zoning restrictions? other?

[mpd618]

I think sometimes we are expecting too much change (or at least change to come too quickly) as result of our of our LRT, especially in a suburban spot like this.

The problem is that we don't even know whether the market actually wants to build this in preference to something more dense and urban. And that's because Waterloo's zoning wouldn't allow something more dense and urban, and with less parking.

[planningthatplannyplan]

The problem is that we don't even know whether the market actually wants to build this in preference to something more dense and urban. And that's because Waterloo's zoning wouldn't allow something more dense and urban, and with less parking.

I took a look, and Waterloo's current zoning by-law does contain parking regulations that require one parking space per hotel unit, as well as parking spots to cover things like convention centre space. Of course, setbacks also have to be met, which I'm sure not everyone would love. Beyond that, it looks like hotel uses can build to the maximum permitted height, so given that the proposed Official Plan would permit 81 metres on this site (something like 25 storeys), I'm not too sure how Waterloo is holding a site like this back from being "more dense". Granted, Waterloo doesn't permit Burj Khalifa heights (828 metres and more than 160 storeys), but permitting a 25 storey hotel sounds pretty dense to me. Of course, the market doesn't exist for this size of a hotel, which is another issue. To me, that is the point though; the market is not there for "dense" hotel sites or extremely urban office parks. Waterloo's suburban market (which this site is located in right now) will never have the same land use characteristics as downtown Toronto because the land values will never be the same and the population/employment density does not (and will never) exist to support such uber-dense uses. Waterloo will be a City of 150,000 in 2031 and Toronto will be around 4 Million (I could be off on Toronto's number, I did not look), so expect stark differences even then.

[bcwessel]

I took a look, and Waterloo's current zoning by-law does contain parking regulations that require one parking space per hotel unit, as well as parking spots to cover things like convention centre space. Of course, setbacks also have to be met, which I'm sure not everyone would love. Beyond that, it looks like hotel uses can build to the maximum permitted height, so given that the proposed Official Plan would permit 81 metres on this site (something like 25 storeys), I'm not too sure how Waterloo is holding a site like this back from being "more dense". Granted, Waterloo doesn't permit Burj Khalifa heights (828 metres and more than 160 storeys), but permitting a 25 storey hotel sounds pretty dense to me. Of course, the market doesn't exist for this size of a hotel, which is another issue. To me, that is the point though; the market is not there for "dense" hotel sites or extremely urban office parks. Waterloo's suburban market (which this site is located in right now) will never have the same land use characteristics as downtown Toronto because the land values will never be the same and the population/employment density does not (and will never) exist to support such uber-dense uses. Waterloo will be a City of 150,000 in 2031 and Toronto will be around 4 Million (I could be off on Toronto's number, I did not look), so expect stark differences even then.

I don't really understand what difference a lack of height restrictions makes in the context of parking minimums and density. If you built a 25-storey hotel, you would need a concomitant number of spaces to reflect the extra number of rooms. The parking would take up a greater amount of the available space, and site coverage would decrease accordingly. Site coverage is just as important as height when you're calculating density (as the Corbusian towers which dominate Toronto's outer-ring suburbs demonstrate).

You're also not addressing the real issue brought up by mpd's post, which is what exactly are we hoping to accomplish by enforcing parking minimums (not just on this site but anywhere)? Once we've been able to answer that, follow-up questions will likely include: Is there any evidence to suggest that parking minimums actually help us to achieve our goals? Does the thinking informing the regulation of parking minimums align with current planning practices and goals (are our previous goals the same as our current ones)? And, would developers be doing things differently if parking minimums weren't being imposed?

[planningthatplannyplan]

I don't really understand what difference a lack of height restrictions makes in the context of parking minimums and density. If you built a 25-storey hotel, you would need a concomitant number of spaces to reflect the extra number of rooms. The parking would take up a greater amount of the available space, and site coverage would decrease accordingly. Site coverage is just as important as height when you're calculating density (as the Corbusian towers which dominate Toronto's outer-ring suburbs demonstrate).

You're also not addressing the real issue brought up by mpd's post, which is what exactly are we hoping to accomplish by enforcing parking minimums (not just on this site but anywhere)? Once we've been able to answer that, follow-up questions will likely include: Is there any evidence to suggest that parking minimums actually help us to achieve our goals? Does the thinking informing the regulation of parking minimums align with current planning practices and goals (are our previous goals the same as our current ones)? And, would developers be doing things differently if parking minimums weren't being imposed?

Developers often provide more than the minimum required parking in mid-sized cities due to the demand for parking. My point is this: A framework looks to exists for a pretty dense hotel development. A framework also exists for a very suburban hotel development. Mpd implied that moronic planners constrain sites so that they can only be suburban in form. I am a planner (albeit one from out of town) and so I know how to read a zoning by-law, and can say unequivocally that Waterloo's zoning by-law appears to give developers a choice. For the life of me, I dont understand why a developer's choice to build (say, for example) surface parking to accommodate twice the minimum required parking leaves only planners to blame. That is my point, and to me, that is what mpd's comment was about. Why arent developers building parking structures, because they can under zoning by-laws. Why do they provide more than the minimum required parking? These are choices they make and if people are pointing blame (which happens a lot on this site), it seems odd that developers are often depicted as having their hands tied by planners that are driven (like that word choice?) to ruin cities.