Horne and Pitfield Building Redevelopment | ?m | ?s | Limak Investments

The design itself looks okay imo but in my mind it's kind of a B-grade Mackenzie Tower (literally looks like it has the same uses). I agree with the point about questioning the integrity of the developer to actually finish this project, and having a large heritage building in the crossfire if something goes wrong isn't great.
Thats fair, I like this one but I don't love it by any means. I also agree with the points made above that this could and should just be developed on an empty lot if it's developed at all.

Man the Mackenzie tower was gorgeous, its a shame we never got to see it built.
 
^^

i'm with IanO and EtoV and cmd uw et al on this one.

the building doesn't need enhancement and tinkering and more dignity or improvements in terms of detail and character as proposed here.

i am not a big fan of facadism except when there is no other structural remedy available for preservation and this - with apologies to cbc - isn't that.

the east and north facades are throwaways? in whose world? the east facade has context and it has windows and is set back from the lane so there is an opportunity to animate it. the vacant lot to the north is part of this site so the same thing applies.

this isn't even facadism - on a percentage basis, i'm not even sure if they're proposing to salvage even 30 percent of the existing facades by the time you remove two of them entirely and emasculate the lower portions and original window treatments of the other two.

if you want to do something more appropriate than the original heritage structure, don't start with an original heritage structure and destroy it in the making. there is no architecturally defensible rationale for doing this noting that not only are all of the facades either being demolished or emasculated historically, all of the structurally sound interiors are going to be gutted in the process as well.

as for the end product, if this was being proposed as a new greenfield building it equally fails in being terribly disjointed and awkward from top to bottom. it seems to want to offer a little of everything for everybody and in the process fails to satisfy anyone.

as long as the city seems prepared to continue to allow additional density simply for the asking - and in this case accepting the loss of a heritage structure to boot - instead of allowing the free transfer/sale of excess density in order to protect the limited remaining historical inventory we have, this kind of weird agglomeration is what we'll end up with. this is neither the same circumstances nor the same quality of solution to their circumstances that led to enbridge centre/kelly ramsay block, the lodge pendennis or the brighton block.

jmho for whatever it's worth.
 
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Dear City of Edmonton - There are a number of empty lots and run down building downtown. Please focus all of your efforts on dealing with these before allowing one of the few decent remaining heritage buildings in the area to be destroyed.


Here is the link where you can submit that feedback in a manner that will be more effective, hopefully in a more constructive and eloquent way as well.
 
Dear City of Edmonton - There are a number of empty lots and run down building downtown. Please focus all of your efforts on dealing with these before allowing one of the few decent remaining heritage buildings in the area to be destroyed.
Are you aware that this is not SimCity and the CoE doesn't actually dictate which lots will or not be chosen by developers, right? And that negative reinforcements, like barring all "unwanted" developments usually just pushes developments away while, on the other hand, "positive" reinforcements are expensive?

As much as I would love to see the vacant lots get developed before even considering tearing out old buildings, there's only so much the public administration can do to bar current owners of lots and buildings from pricing and selling their assets however the hell they want (I actually believe the many levels of government already have waaaaaay to much power over stuff, to be honest). Currently vacant lots are a lot more expensive to buy than some buildings, for two reasons: most of them are being used as paid parking lots, yielding revenue; it's cheaper and faster to build in clean, leveled lots than demolition + build (more permits, more time, more labor, etc...). On the other side of this, maintaining an existing building is expensive, property taxes are higher and a lot of building owners are dealing with cashflow issues that can be solved by selling assets.

The only way for the CoE to curb this movement would be to make several policy changes that would fast-track historic designation, compensate the building owners dearly, increase property taxes for vacant lots (especially in denser neighborhoods) and reduce the incentive for surface parking such as lowering/extinguishing paid public parking, subsidizing transit to increase ridership, etc... All is this is politically and financially expensive, lengthy and not guaranteed to yield the expected results. Other than that, the only way for the public administration to ban the current movement would be to arbitrarily block any such development, which would strengthen the "unfriendly to development" brand that Edmonton already carries and crowd-out existing and future players in the development industry, especially in Downtown. I do believe that the City needs to crack down hard on the "buy, demo and flip" movement, introduce conditions in the approvals, force the developed to actually provide proof of financial capability to develop, only release the final approval once they have a market assessment audited independently, so we don't end up with another BMO site.

As cold-hearted as it might sound, sometimes you need to cut of the hand to keep the arm. If we want some of those initiatives I mentioned before to be somewhat feasible, we need to take on every reasonable opportunity to densify downtown, add in more residents and businesses, increasing the demand to a point where it will be just as profitable to develop a surface parking lot as it is to demolish an old building (or at least, just marginally less profitable, but better for reputation and public relations, making it more profitable in the long term).

That's my two cents.
 
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nonsense...

the city of edmonton can curb this simply by saying to the developer that their proposal must comply with the zoning regulations in currently which happen to also be the zoning regulations in place when it was purchased. that is all that the developer is entitled to. there is no "compensation" for refusing to increase that potential.

the zoning on this parcel is heritage area:

https://webdocs.edmonton.ca/infrapl...ecial_Areas/910_7_(HA)_Heritage_Area_Zone.htm

in a nutshell, that zoning provides for a maximum fsr of 8.0 and a maximum height of 115 metres in addition to having to comply with some proscriptive design elements and integration.

this application is for an fsr of 16.0 and a height of 160 metres.

as cold-hearted as it might sound, this isn't simcity and if it doesn't comply with city zoning requirements you don't automatically get to build it (along with destroying a heritage building to enable that).
 
^^^^ When it comes to a major development, has the City ever deferred solidly to zoning regulations -- to my mind this only occurred when height restrictions were in place vis-a-vis the Municipal Airport. You might not like the proposed development and that is your prerogative, but bringing zoning regulations into the argument is a little disingenuous since they are so pliable from the City side. And it isn't "nonsense" just because you have stuck yourself in one point-of-view; others have a right to opine on the subject, regardless of your stance.
 
I just sat in on the Edmonton Design Committee meeting this evening and there were vocal committee members concerned about the development of this heritage building. There was also support (from others) for activating this corner that has been under utilized. Will be interesting to see the written recommendation from the committee.
 
Our city has a number of corners that are under utilized. However, many do not have intact historic buildings on them. Maybe a starting point of good design should be keeping such buildings and not destroying him.
 
^

nonsense...

the city of edmonton can curb this simply by saying to the developer that their proposal must comply with the zoning regulations in currently which happen to also be the zoning regulations in place when it was purchased. that is all that the developer is entitled to. there is no "compensation" for refusing to increase that potential.

the zoning on this parcel is heritage area:

https://webdocs.edmonton.ca/infrapl...ecial_Areas/910_7_(HA)_Heritage_Area_Zone.htm

in a nutshell, that zoning provides for a maximum fsr of 8.0 and a maximum height of 115 metres in addition to having to comply with some proscriptive design elements and integration.

this application is for an fsr of 16.0 and a height of 160 metres.

as cold-hearted as it might sound, this isn't simcity and if it doesn't comply with city zoning requirements you don't automatically get to build it (along with destroying a heritage building to enable that).
I don't know much about the rezoning process. Is there an appeal from a decision of the City? Is it practically feasible for the City to deny all rezoning requests on developed land downtown? I am always skeptical of simple solutions -- most people aren't stupid and if there were easy wins people would probably have taken them by now.
 
I don't know much about the rezoning process. Is there an appeal from a decision of the City? Is it practically feasible for the City to deny all rezoning requests on developed land downtown? I am always skeptical of simple solutions -- most people aren't stupid and if there were easy wins people would probably have taken them by now.
it's probably not practically feasible for the city to deny all rezoning requests but it's not in the city's best interests to approve all rezoning requests either. because if that's what's going on then it's simply an acknowledgement that your zoning requirements and schedules are broken. and the answer to that isn't the wild west approval of every request that gets made ,warranted or not. the answer to that is rewrite/fix your zoning bylaws so they can be relied upon to do what they're supposed to do. the sad part here is that the zoning for this site was purposefully created to protect buildings like this one and to imbue a similar to character to the entire street (or at least from jasper to 104 avenue). it is arguably the most successful zoning schedule/streetscape we have in the city. If we're throwing this one out, it's the proverbial throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
 
it's probably not practically feasible for the city to deny all rezoning requests but it's not in the city's best interests to approve all rezoning requests either. because if that's what's going on then it's simply an acknowledgement that your zoning requirements and schedules are broken. and the answer to that isn't the wild west approval of every request that gets made ,warranted or not. the answer to that is rewrite/fix your zoning bylaws so they can be relied upon to do what they're supposed to do. the sad part here is that the zoning for this site was purposefully created to protect buildings like this one and to imbue a similar to character to the entire street (or at least from jasper to 104 avenue). it is arguably the most successful zoning schedule/streetscape we have in the city. If we're throwing this one out, it's the proverbial throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Thankfully this process is well underway with hopeful implementation next year.
 

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