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The Quarters

thommyjo said:
I feel like they made the Quarters bigger than it should have been. Renderings and the vision for it has always been a dense, high rise area. But a bunch of 4-8 story residential buildings is likely the only possibility for it to be built out in the next 2 decades.

Too much high density land still in downtown proper and Oliver.

10 buildings like Mercury Block around here would be better.
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Yes, if something bigger is not happening, then you need to start smaller. Filling in a few of the empty lots with new 4-8 story residential buildings to start would help the area.

Even on 104 St, residential development started with the conversion of old warehouse buildings of that size, when there were just mostly surface parking lots on the other side of the street, that were eventually filled by high rises.
 
I know I said this already in another thread but I found a great example of the type of development I'd personally like to see in the Quarters. With no big towers and mostly mid and low rise development. I think that South Lake Union in Seattle would be a great model to follow and it's somewhat close to being in a similar situation to the Quarters as a piece of land located immediately adjacent to the CBD, which was just recently redeveloped.
South Lake Union.jpg
South Lake Union2.jpg
 
A community rock and one of the most unique stores I've ever had the chance to visit.
 
erudyk_29 said:
I know I said this already in another thread but I found a great example of the type of development I'd personally like to see in the Quarters. With no big towers and mostly mid and low rise development. I think that South Lake Union in Seattle would be a great model to follow and it's somewhat close to being in a similar situation to the Quarters as a piece of land located immediately adjacent to the CBD, which was just recently redeveloped.
View attachment 518891View attachment 518892
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100% agree with this! It will be decades before there's demand to fill out the quarters with large towers considering it's competing with other areas as well. Development like this is feasible and would be desirable.
 
SMayo said:
100% agree with this! It will be decades before there's demand to fill out the quarters with large towers considering it's competing with other areas as well. Development like this is feasible and would be desirable.
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But aren't we trying to get more density in the area? The whole idea is to get as many people as possible living and being active downtown. The Quarters is a superb location close to cultural, recreational, government, shopping and other amenities and the area is well-served by transit. Isn't the goal to get MORE density on a site like that rather than replicating a low-rise development you can already find outside the Henday?

Century Park is a cautionary tale. The site was completely available for redevelopment and had superb access by both road and mass transit, and instead of density we got a bunch of low-rise that's no different or more impactful than anything else in the SW. What a waste of great potential.

Let's not do the same downtown.
 
TravellingChris said:
Century Park is a cautionary tale. The site was completely available for redevelopment and had superb access by both road and mass transit, and instead of density we got a bunch of low-rise that's no different or more impactful than anything else in the SW. What a waste of great potential.
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Century Park still has A LOT of available land to develop and, on average, it is substantially denser than your average suburban 5-story cookie-cutter buildings.

It could've been better, for sure, but it certainly isn't as terrible as you're making it sound. it's also not a write-off yet, since over half of the land still sits undeveloped.

TravellingChris said:
But aren't we trying to get more density in the area? The whole idea is to get as many people as possible living and being active downtown. The Quarters is a superb location close to cultural, recreational, government, shopping and other amenities and the area is well-served by transit. Isn't the goal to get MORE density on a site like that rather than replicating a low-rise development you can already find outside the Henday?
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You can have great density without going for strictly high-rises. European cities are a great example of this, but even other cities in NA have done great with low and mid-rise buildings mixed up with some high-rises. Portland, Vancouver, San Diego, Seattle, Montreal, Washington DC...

What I get from what @erudyk_29 and @SMayo are proposing is not a bunch of 5-story woodframe cookie cutter from the suburbs, but a bunch of stuff like The Hat @122, Mercury Block, etc.

These 8-15 story chunky buildings, with CRUs, mixed with a couple of mixed use high-rises, instead of waiting for dozens of 30+ stories towers, that the Quarters would have to dispute against Oliver and, especially, Downtown.

These low and mid-rise buildings have no place Downtown, but could definitely help add some much needes density to the immediate surroundings, and revitalize the area on the way, at a much lower cost than big towers.

As much as I'd love to see it, Edmonton is not, and will never be, Manhattan, or Toronto, where we'll be able to have the entirety of the Quarters, Oliver, Garneau and Downtown filled to the brim with 30 stories+ towers. I will be more than happy to see DT with as many tall buildings as possible, and then a bunch of densely packed mid-rises in the surrounding neighborhoods (with the occasional high-rise) rather than a few nodes with two or three high-rises in the middle of a sea of gravel parking lots (see Hat @5 Corners for reference).
 
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TravellingChris said:
But aren't we trying to get more density in the area? The whole idea is to get as many people as possible living and being active downtown. The Quarters is a superb location close to cultural, recreational, government, shopping and other amenities and the area is well-served by transit. Isn't the goal to get MORE density on a site like that rather than replicating a low-rise development you can already find outside the Henday?

Century Park is a cautionary tale. The site was completely available for redevelopment and had superb access by both road and mass transit, and instead of density we got a bunch of low-rise that's no different or more impactful than anything else in the SW. What a waste of great potential.

Let's not do the same downtown.
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It's been a decade of the quarters redevelopment and they've built 1 tower, it's just not realistic to wait and expect the whole area to be filled, out by giant high rises. Plus adding density doesn't always have to mean building as tall as possible, smart 6-12 story developments could add tons of people to the neighborhood.

Also comparing century park to the quarters is like apples and oranges.
 
Precisely, as @ChazYEG points out, this style of development is what we see in European cities it is also in other NA cities as well, though it is very uncommon. It's the concept of missing middle. Too often in North America we see development as either single-family homes or massive towers, with no in between. Far too often people think that those are the only options and you can see the consequences of this type of thinking in Toronto, in places like North York where you see massive skyscrapers backing directly onto single-family neighborhoods.

TravellingChris said:
Isn't the goal to get MORE density on a site like that rather than replicating a low-rise development you can already find outside the Henday?
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There is a significant difference between what we're advocating for and low-rise development outside the Henday. First of all, suburban 5 over 1's are not mixed-use, generally speaking they are strictly residential condo units. As you point out it is immediately adjacent to other density, creating the potential for a critical mass of urban non-car oriented residents, unlike in the burbs where there isn't the infrastructure nor the density for those type of residents to exist. It is also directly connected to rapid-transit with the new Valley-Line.

If you took a typical suburban 5 over 1, left its design completely unchanged but plopped it in Oliver or Garneau instead of Chapelle or Lewis Farms you will create a completely different type of lifestyle and attract different types of residents.
 
IanO said:
The Quarters are hampered by proximity and perception issues, fragmented land ownership, over-encumbered city-owned lands and far more sure places to develop and deploy capital.
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You know what is a possible solution that the smartest people in the room have already decided they have no interest in exploring? A municipal development corp in which the city spins the lands into a city owned land development corporation that has proper governance and executive oversight in which Edmontonians would be the sole shareholder similar to what is already in place with EPCOR....

Between Botchford, Rossdale, and the Quarters, this city owns more undeveloped land with little momentum in its core inner city neighborhoods than any other major city in Canada. So much opportunity for tax revenue, development and just an overall better urban experience especially in the spirit of densification and infilling.
 
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Yeah, I think pushing for high rises is silly. Say 1-2 get built every year in the quarters, it’s still, what? 30+ years for the majority of the land to be filled?

In 30+ years, there will be other towers and buildings at the end of their lives throughout our core needing demolition anyways. So we won’t run out of land this century.

And none of this accounts for density that will be added along train lines, which will compete with downtown developments for apartments/rentals. Not to mention stationlands, ice district phase 2, all the land from 109st to 105st. The continued density that’ll be added in Oliver, whyte, 124th. Blatchford, stadium, exhibition, uofa240. There’s too much land we want density on.

We could do a dozen 5 over 1s in the quarters and it would still give plenty of land to be developed at higher densities. But then there might at least be interest if those initial projects get 3000 residents in the area already. Currently there’s just no demand for high rises. Look at how much density/development Calgary has. And yet there are still dozens of plots of land to build on throughout the east village & beltline, not to mention sunalta heights, etc.
 
CaptainBL said:
You know what is a possible solution that the smartest people in the room have already decided they have no interest in exploring? A municipal development corp in which the city spins the lands into a city owned land development corporation that has proper governance and executive oversight in which Edmontonians would be the sole shareholder similar to what is already in place with EPCOR....

Between Botchford, Rossdale, and the Quarters, this city owns more undeveloped land with little momentum in its core inner city neighborhoods than any other major city in Canada. So much opportunity for tax revenue, development and just an overall better urban experience especially in the spirit of densification and infilling.
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I would scream this from the roof tops if I had enough breath.

Even the Feds, who love a bloated bureaucracy more than anyone, have figured this out with CLC.
 
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