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Miscellaneous

mcr said:
Some folks just don't value heritage buildings unless they're really impressive looking. A good friend of mine, in all sincerity, thought a better use of the Army & Navy building on Whyte Ave would be a parking lot "to bring more people to the area and get rid of a useless old building." His first preference was a nice new building there, but preferred parking over the old building. We had a fun argument on that one, haha. Just different opinions out there.
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I remember years ago when United Cycle moved and left a fairly large building empty for a while, but it was nicely split up into several smaller spaces which worked well.

The Army & Navy building was designed as a retail space on a retail street and it seems like the new owners understand something similar could work well for it too. We can successfully reuse and adapt older buildings.
 
Rice Howard Place is coming along
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Airboy said:
A 7 school package was awarded on Friday. Another package of 5 is coming later this spring. I believe Edmonton is getting 3.
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I've heard through the grapevine that these are not particularly desirable contracts, because the RFP respondent needs to commit to building the infrastructure of several schools across multiple communities. You can't just work on one of the projects, you have to finish every part of the "school bundle".

IMO it's high-risk low-reward. It reduces competition in the tendering process because SME's don't usually have the scale for project bundles of this size (higher costs) and it puts the entire process on one provider (high risk). This is compounding with the fact that GoA contracts are exempt from Prompt Payment and Lien Legislation, so if a contract winner goes belly-up because the GoA isn't paying, they're out of luck.
 
That is the AI way. The last package my firm did had 2 schools in Edmonton 1 in Leduc , Blackfalds and outside Calgary. This one had 3 in Edmonton the rest in calgary or small town alberta. Next package will be the same.

This first package has to have ground work started this fall.

You have to put a consortium together. It was tough for the subs but the GCs also have to have a lot of people. We only have so many subs that are big enough for 2 schools let alone 7. When I was with Stantec we did 5 with Clark. But it was done as an assembly line type project. Teams would move from one project to the next. the last package I worked on was a bit of a scramble because the Province wanted all the schools ready at the same time. At the time there were 35 school either being built or renovated.so we were tight for trades. Just based on what I'm seeing and the work coming down the pipe we will be stressed for trades.
 
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There are a few photos kicking around, but DYK that the APA/Coast on 105st used to be a ~6 storey hotel. If you look at the south elevation you can actually see where the old hotel and new meet.

Never knew that.
 
Driving down 97st on the northside this morning, I noticed the old Eden strip joint is completely fenced in with signs up for a 6 storey apartment building called "ARH Plaza" by these guys ARH Homes. I can't find the rendering anywhere online though, but from a distance it didn't look too bad

*edit* looks like @Airboy was able to get a better look at the rendering I saw (see next post)
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97St from the Yellowhead north is just a complete mess of retail and service. It's almost like it organically grew without any zoning in place. Also completely pedestrian hostile; hopefully some new residential developments will improve the landscape.
 
buildings said:
97St from the Yellowhead north is just a complete mess of retail and service. It's almost like it organically grew without any zoning in place. Also completely pedestrian hostile; hopefully some new residential developments will improve the landscape.
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Yeah it's definitely a mess, but I think there's potential to fix a lot of it. The area around it needs to start densifying more, though. Hopefully this kick starts more projects in the area
 
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I don't know about this specific project, but Arts Common on 118 was proposed years ago to replace the old cycle shop which has since been torn down.

My brother was involved and they tried to make it work for years but didn't gain any traction.
 
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