A mid-block walkway is supposed to be a convenient shortcut but two prominent local builders say the City’s request to put one in their latest project means they will be building a path to nowhere.

Architect's rendering of the proposed Jukebox condo on View Street. Image supplied.

Developers Fraser McColl and Don Charity are poised to start work on the Jukebox, an eight-story condo building on the south side of the 1000 block of View Street. The duo’s previous residential projects include the Mosaic at 1061 Fort Street and The Reef at 21 Erie Street.

City planners encourage mid-block developments to have walkways to allow pedestrians to cut through Victoria’s long city blocks. But often the ultimate success of these urban passageways is dependent on the layout of property beyond the control of the developer.

Developers Don Charity and Fraser McColl are teaming up again on another Harris Green condo project. Photo by Robert Randall © VibrantVictoria.ca.

In the case of the Jukebox, a walkway would lead to the adjacent building owned by Joseph Egoyan at 1028 Fort Street. Egoyan’s mock-Tudor two-storey won a Hallmark Society award in 1992 for heritage restoration. McColl claims Egoyan is not interested in having his property used as a cut-through and in fact will accept no communications from the developers on the subject. The other side of the walkway would face the blank concrete wall and parking ramp of the Adria condo at 1026 Fort Street. City Hall planners have said in the past that walkways should be built even if it means waiting years for neighbouring properties to develop in order to complete the passageway.

A walkway at the eastern edge of the site would prevent the Jukebox from being split in two but would run against the blank wall of the Tara Place apartment building’s parking garage. A path at the western side of the property would terminate against existing two-storey commercial buildings on Fort Street and would be useless until a future developer agreed to continue the walkway to the street.

McColl is no stranger to interior walkways. His St. Andrews Square project on the old Standard Furniture site is a commercial mall at the base of two office buildings connecting View Street to Yates Street. McColl says that today the busy mall pays its own way but for a decade the space was a money-loser.

The standoff is reminiscent of the City’s attempts to introduce a walkway into a proposed development at 819 Yates Street (the Capitol 6/Empire Theatre parking lot). Like the Adria on Fort, the 819 Yates walkway would have adjoined a blank concrete wall and vehicle ramp, in this case, belonging to the St. Vincent de Paul apartments. Despite the fact the site was targeted for a walkway many years earlier, the St. Vincent de Paul wall was built without windows or storefronts and presents a pedestrian-unfriendly facade that hinders any attempt by 819 Yates developers to create a safe, vibrant, viable walkway. The Jukebox developers, faced with a similar dilemma, hope to convince City Hall to drop the walkway idea.

McColl and Charity say they don’t have the patience to wait decades for a potential second half of a walkway to be completed. “It will be a dead-end that will have to be permanently gated,” McColl says.

The Jukebox site adjoins Joseph Egoyan's two-storey Tudor building and the four-storey Adria condo. Photo by Robert Randall © VibrantVictoria.ca.

The Jukebox site is a weed and garbage-strewn vacant lot that still sports pilings from a decades-old failed attempt to build a government-funded apartment block. Prior to that it was the site of the popular Club Tango dance hall.

McColl and Charity hope to recapture the funky vibe of the Mosaic building one block to the south with a mix of small suites wrapped in a eclectic mix of contemporary and deco architecture. The initial designs were the inspiration of long-time collaborator Jan Zak, the architect responsible for the Mosaic rehabilitation of 2000, the neighbouring Jigsaw condo and the Reef condo, among others.

Follow the Jukebox proposal here on VibrantVictoria’s discussion forum.  To learn more about the Jukebox project on VibrantVictoria construction projects list, click here.

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