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Building tall and urban "form" in Vancouver


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#41 Mike K.

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Posted 26 June 2018 - 08:22 AM

Jeepers, looking at Vancouver's buildings make you wonder how the City could have allowed nearly all residential buildings to look identical. From a distance it's just a giant green skyline with some bluer hues thrown in.


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#42 AllseeingEye

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Posted 10 August 2018 - 08:12 PM

Not Vancouver but West Van - pretty cool, I would love to see some truly innovative stuff like this in Victoria. Oh wait.....guess that would be a fail with the "We look too much like Vancouver!" crowd. Still I'm really liking this:

 

https://www.nsnews.c...come-1.23392335



#43 Jackerbie

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Posted 28 November 2019 - 10:49 AM

Coquitlam may be getting an interesting 29-storey tower. The cladding is meant to imitate the appearance of log booms, while the podium has a more heritage feel (tall and narrow windows, cornice and trim details, awnings, etc.)

 

The sloping site reminds me of a certain Esquimalt project that received a haircut recently.

 

901-Lougheed-Hwy-Coquitlam-rendering-1-9

 

More renders of the project here: https://urbanyvr.com...-mountain-tower



#44 aastra

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Posted 28 November 2019 - 01:04 PM

The podium seems to have been designed to fit in an old downtown or other such old commercial district.



#45 Nparker

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Posted 14 February 2020 - 07:00 AM

From a letter in today's Times Colonist:

Modest low-rise apartments are being replaced with expensive new highrise condos and apartments...

https://www.timescol...cars-1.24076283

Can anyone think of an example of this happening recently in Victoria? It seems to me the vast majority of highrises are being built on former empty lots and surface parking. Why this myth is allowed to be perpetuated is beyond me.

 

Edit: I've re-posted this to the "Building Tall in Victoria" thread, where I had intended it to be.


Edited by Nparker, 14 February 2020 - 09:05 AM.


#46 Mike K.

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Posted 14 February 2020 - 08:53 AM

Yeah, not sure where this is actually the case. You’ll never see examples of this cited, right? Just that it’s happening, en masse.

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#47 mbjj

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Posted 14 February 2020 - 09:02 AM

I'm not a fan of highrises, but haven't seen any of this in Fairfield that I can think of.



#48 Hotel Mike

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Posted 14 February 2020 - 09:10 AM

Ideas like this spread like wildfire. People will adopt this as truth and protest any time a developer proposes something unique in the city. Growth is inevitable. How you manage that growth forms the blueprint for the future of our cities. You can't let the 'no change, we like it as it is' crowd dictate how that growth occurs.


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Don't be so sure.:cool:

#49 Nparker

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Posted 14 February 2020 - 09:12 AM

 

You can't let the 'no change, we like it as it is' crowd dictate how that growth occurs.

You mean the "no change, we like it as it was, but it really wasn't like that at all" crowd.



#50 Victoria Watcher

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Posted 14 February 2020 - 08:16 PM

ideas like this are nothing new.

#51 Rob Randall

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Posted 23 February 2020 - 01:47 PM

Remarkable story out of NYC:

a judge in New York ruled that a new 668-foot tall condo exceeds legal zoning limits. The Upper West Side building used a zoning loophole to get approval, which the court ruled should never have been granted.

The massive condo is nearly complete. But according to Justice W. Franc Perry, that doesn't give the developers a pass. And now, he has ordered them to lop off 20 completed storeys from the highrise building.

 

 

https://www.cbc.ca/r...ji5EeSb_y6He4No



#52 Mattjvd

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Posted 23 February 2020 - 02:12 PM

Remarkable story out of NYC:

https://www.cbc.ca/r...ji5EeSb_y6He4No


Seeing as the city granted the building permits and approved the project, would they be liable for damages to the developer if they did have to shorten the tower?

#53 aastra

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Posted 23 February 2020 - 02:52 PM

Yeah, methinks it will be yet another case of Joe Public footing a big bill no matter what happens. At a glance, the following bit doesn't sound encouraging:

 

 

The Upper West Side building used a zoning loophole to get approval, which the court ruled should never have been granted.

 

It's funny, this tower isn't bad looking and seems legitimately Manhattan-ish, unlike the other new residential skyscrapers which look so out of place and more appropriate to Dubai or Shanghai.



#54 aastra

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Posted 23 February 2020 - 02:58 PM

From NewYorkYimby.com:

 

 

"We’re concerned that this technique of assembling zoning lots in this way would be used in other cases across the city and set a very dangerous precedent for the creation of unpredictable developments," said Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the MAS. "The development is out of scale for what a reasonable citizen would expect to happen in that community based on the zoning resolution and the application of straightforward principles."

 

Legal representatives for the development team disagree on all grounds. "The reality is that there’s nothing nefarious about it," said Paul Selver, partner at Kramer Levin, which is representing the developers. "If the whole block was one zoning lot, you could still build the exact same building. The gerrymandering didn’t create this building; the fact that you have a superblock created the ability to build this building. And that superblock goes back to Robert Moses times."
 

According to Selver, the origins of the oddly shaped lot go back to 1987, when then-owners of the neighboring Lincoln Towers complex pieced together plots of vacant land for the purpose of development, including portions of existing tax lots. In 2007, this zoning lot was merged with other tax lots to form a larger zoning lot that included the 200 Amsterdam parcel.

"That’s the issue: whether or not you can have a zoning lot that’s composed of portions of tax lots, or whether you can only have a zoning lot that’s composed of core tax lots," Selver said. And, according to Selver, history sides with the former. "It’s not that common, but it’s established," he said, pointing to Park Avenue’s MetLife Building (formerly Pan Am) as the most prominent example of a project constructed in this way.

In total, 20 other buildings around the city have been built using partial tax lots. In addition to containing almost 2,300 apartments, the buildings are burdened by hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage loans. "The judge has put the city in a little bit of a pickle here," Selver said. "[His ruling] technically means that those certificates of occupancy are illegal, because the zoning lots on which they’re based are not legal."

 



#55 aastra

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Posted 23 February 2020 - 03:00 PM

--

 

 

In fact, three of these buildings—200 West End Avenue, 180 Amsterdam Avenue, and 160 Amsterdam Avenue—were built right next to 200 Amsterdam on the gerrymandered lot, with work concluding as recently as 2013. "You didn’t hear anybody say a peep," Selver said. "There was not a sound raised about gerrymandered zoning lots when people were building those buildings."



#56 aastra

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Posted 23 February 2020 - 03:14 PM

So it seems the problem isn't the loopholes so much as what the developer decided to build via the loopholes? If the community associations don't have a problem with what the developer wants to build then the loopholes are also no problem? If this building had violated the loopholes but been a bit shorter, would anybody care?



#57 Nparker

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Posted 23 February 2020 - 03:26 PM

Gerrymandering voting districts to manipulate the results of a presidential election is OK, but gerrymander zoning and watch out!



#58 aastra

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Posted 23 February 2020 - 03:28 PM

I guess the difference is, people have always had some reasonable expectation that development processes were half-decently legitimate.



 



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