archited
Senior Member
CWB is staying here because the industrial, the experimental, and the growth potential of the Country will be centered here. I know, some of the naysayers on this site think I am exaggerating, but I am not.
Connect Centre | 56.3m | 16s | ONE Properties | DIALOG
- Thread starter SRC Admin
- Start date
CaptainBL
Active Member
Likewise, the Shaw story for historical reference:
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/PSCMV5A4PJA5TCEG25QCICMX7Q)
Sale of telecom empire has ‘generational impact’ on Shaw family
Takeover would remove another head office from Alberta
www.theglobeandmail.com
MacLac
Active Member
Stantec is 650,000 - so almost exactly half as big....so what's wrong with a 330,000 sq/ft building? Yeah it's stubby, but to all those that think this is not worthy.......it's worthy...
Compared to Nexen - medium sized energy co. in YYC only takes up 290,000 sq/ft in the Bow...now their old building sits empty...
Compared to Nexen - medium sized energy co. in YYC only takes up 290,000 sq/ft in the Bow...now their old building sits empty...
Last edited:
cpnfantstk
Active Member
Agreed, While I like this better than the last couple of renders of their proposed residential tower, it's a far cry from what was in the original. Nice to have an all glass office building but this is pretty short and stumpy and doesn't look right in that location. Just flew over Doha a couple of days ago so seeing this bums me out a bit.
archited
Senior Member
^^^^ Let's call this the "short and stubby" so that it has a colloquial, adorific (my word) handle. It will create a new impetus to get the 104th street Katz property in motion as well as taking us closer to a Phase II startup. If, on the 104th property we see a 40-storey residential tower, the visual balance will have been achieved and our sensibilities restored.
TAS
Senior Member
What happened between Mayor Reimer and Shaw if you don't mind elaborating.
I see Shaw just gifted Calgary's Glenbow Museum $35 million for an artist's program and to provide free admission to the museum forever.
Stevey_G
Active Member
I think a nice swoop on the roof top would pay dividends for how this building integrated into the curvy ice district. The taller towers can get away with being boxy, this one feels a little out of place.
CaptainBL
Active Member
It was in the Globe article I posted in post 1,652 and will share the link again here:
Sale of telecom empire has ‘generational impact’ on Shaw family
Takeover would remove another head office from Alberta
www.theglobeandmail.com
The article speaks to how Shaw felt that Jan Riemer was hampering Shaw's growth and investment in Edmonton. At the time, Shaw was actively willing to invest in Edmonton's fiber optics network, they were interested in building a new head office downtown, and Jan Riemer and council were not interested in having both Shaw and TELUS (which was a recently merged company of Edmonton Telephone, aka Ed Tel and Alberta Government Telephones, aka AGT) battle for fiber optics investment in the city. Riemer and council elected to essentially leave fiber optic investment a monopoly to the newly formed Telus resulting in Shaw packing up and moving to Calgary, which was actively lobbying Shaw to move given the turmoil in Edmonton.
While I never did see this written anywhere, I heard that one Calgary council member commented at the time of Shaw's move to Calgary that the best advertising the city of Calgary could have is Edmonton (implying that all the anti-business council was only helping companies continue to choose Calgary). This was and has been the start of Edmonton having a reputation as a non business friendly city, especially when Calgary has been so successful luring and welcoming companies from Montreal (CP Rail), Imperial Oil (Toronto), Shaw (Edmonton), just to name a few.
Ironically, Telus moved its head office to Vancouver shortly after the merger of of Ed Tel and Telus leaving Edmonton without both Shaw or Telus, two homegrown telecom companies.
This trend has continued to today in which the city has seen a declining number of corporations actively looking to set up in Edmonton ( i.e. 25 HO in 2010 to 20 in 2020) and why I strongly believe that we have not seen a council or champion of business build strong relations with corporations to ensure that more corporations do not leave the city and to attract more corporations to the city.
occidentalcapital
Active Member
^this is a 90s perspective.
There's a lot up and coming here right now, don't think it is fair to underplay that.
City council support is there through Startup Edmonton and others, but more support would always be welcome!
There's a lot up and coming here right now, don't think it is fair to underplay that.
City council support is there through Startup Edmonton and others, but more support would always be welcome!
Edmonton
New Member
Yes, the original tower would've been better. But buildings don't often end up looking like their design concepts. I'm still very impressed that JW, Stantec, and Rogers Place managed to stick fairly close to their initial renders.
archited
Senior Member
^^^^ That rendering was when the architectural firm Hariri Pontarini was the prime design architect for the high-rise portions of the project (except for the Stantec tower -- Stantec took the design of that building on themselves). HOK out of the U.S. was the architect for the arena. Tower B ended up being designed by dialog (I don't know what the specific politics were behind that choice other than dialog had a local offic and by virtue of that fact was the local Architect of Record). dialog continues to prove itself to be a utilitarian design firm not in the same league as Hariri nor HOK when it comes to creative building design. Both the previous (post-intitial-renderings) design of the apartment tower and now the office building are dialog efforts.
air_ic
New Member
We need a local architecture school, too bad they got rid of that at the u of a. Honestly, everything that has been designed and built here in Edmonton is ugly except for Gene dub’s, mostly.
archited
Senior Member
^^^^ Edmonton (and area) has great Architecture far beyond Gene Dub's efforts and there is a lot more on the books. Some of us are working to get a school of Architecture back. Btw as I have said before Athabasca University has a great Architecture program and is already turning out top students.
TAS
Senior Member
I have a friend living in Vancouver taking the architecture program at Athabasca U (specializing in eco architecture I believe) and is very happy with it.
David A
Active Member
Like many aspects of human endeavor, there is a herd mentality in business, people often see success or money and chase it. Sometimes it works well, sometimes not and not every business needs to be located in a major city to succeed.. I think Vancouver is often more a lifestyle choice than a business one and I don't think, despite some people's delusions, it is very easy to serve a western Canadian market well from Toronto.
I think you also are right, there is more potential in northern Alberta (there is over half of a big province north of of us, plus the NWT), which tilts the future in favour of Edmonton. Southern Alberta's economy is more developed and its area is geographically smaller, so it doesn't have the same potential for growth, plus it faces more constraints in the near future, like water supply.