Even though they seem to be fairly ordinary residential towers I'm still feeling pleasantly surprised. I'm not seeing anything that would lead me to bemoan the CoV's negative influences re: the design aspect. There's even a decent resolution of the top few levels of the main tower, which is always preferable to the graceless & arbitrary chop from Victoria's height-restriction laser. But on the ground level that de-urbanized corner treatment seems to be yet another chapter in the longstanding effort to re-interpret & re-envision Douglas Street's identity as a quintessential downtown street. Why do we feel the need to do that sort of thing?
If that corner doesn't work then we'll have no less than five re-interpretative misfires over five blocks:
-Centennial Square
-the sunken plaza at Douglas and Pandora,
-the ground level of the orange brick office block at Douglas and Herald,
-the space behind the pillars on the ground level of the other office block at Douglas and Herald
Meanwhile, the HBC, the Douglas Hotel, and the Fairfield Block are still patiently showing us how things could (and should) be done, but nobody is particularly interested in following their example. Centra Gas gave it a shot a long time ago, but that's it.
I don't know. I suppose that corner could work, if future redevelopments on the other corners of Douglas/Caledonia go back to the fundamentals. But I guess I'm not very confident that those hypothetical future developments won't also try to re-invent what works rather than simply doing what works.