University City - What's Your Opinion
 

With the new renderings and website up for University City it would appear that a number of us are pretty excited about this project. It certainly seems to be the first project with a really competitive price point. I am wondering what you all think!

I won't be going to UofC but I think it's a pretty good idea. I would like to see more decent affordable housing in the area.

I'm glad to see the first project to get the Brentwood TOD rolling is something affordable. I doubt they'll have much of a problem selling the units, even in the slow market.

I have a bit of a special interest in this project/area. If I were to move back to Calgary I'd want to live in a vibrant and active area but also close to my nephew and his future siblings. With my sister living in Brentwood the Brentwood Station TOD would be perfect. As such, I have high hopse for this project and would like to see it help the area get off to a good start. It looks good, rather promising. I'll probably be making more money back in Calgary but cheaper multifamily housing would be very appealing. I really like the affordable aspect of this project, which might help with any success it may have.

Like the project very much. It's time we started filling those awful surface parking lots with density. Perfect location for it. Close to shopping, close to the LRT, close to Crowchild Trail. I wonder if the $199,999.00 price point will stay around for a while or it's just a teaser....and as soon as construction starts the prices will start climbing. Time will tell, I guess.....

http://www.universitycity.ca/uploads...-rendering.jpg
www.universitycity.ca

I don't think that is enough to go on, aesthetically speaking.

Affordable anything is always positive in a market like Calgary, although i'm not sold on Brentwood as a solid TOD location.

Enthusiasm to be based on how many units actually wind up being owner occupied. In Toronto investors suck up all the economy units in any given new building in minutes. Developers host private sales parties for investors so they might buy everything in sight before anyone else gets a crack at them.

But the pricing trend is positive no matter what,

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._2669569_n.jpg

The person who wrote the plan for this TOD is a genius. I have no doubts the area will turn out well. :cool:

The only likely outcome I see for Brentwood is total gridlock in every form imaginable. I think TOD is great, just don't set it up to fail.

Ignoring cars, roads and parking requirements entirely... 201 is already at the point of dysfunction during rush hour with its present passenger catchment, how does introducing thousands more of what are theoretically supposed to be new transit using residents, to the middle of the route lead to an acceptable outcome?

Unless this is to become an annex of U of C the real external transportation challenges need to be confronted, and four car C-Trains will still be full before they get to Brentwood.

There are many wealthy parents who often will buy condos near the university as an investment when their kids reach university, I'm sure that this project will be very attractive to them. I agree that train capacity will need to be expanded in the future, but from my experience the NW line is nowhere near as crowded as the South line in the mornings.

I think what Policy Wonk is saying (and I have to agree), is that these 'wealthy parents' won't even have a chance to buy up the $199 units, as they'll all have been sold to the developer's 'investors' prior to the project hitting the actual market.

I love the idea of this project. I'd like to hear Wooster's comments on the accessibility.

The operational capacity of the c-train is a bit of a different issue that what is the most appropriate land use surrounding the station. All things being equal, it's a lot more efficient for more people to be living adjacent to Brentwood Station, The Research Park and U of C than out on the fringe of the city instead.

Here's the Mobility and Assessment Plan for the area.

http://www.calgary.ca/DocGallery/BU/...sment_plan.pdf

At which point you have stopped planning and begun day dreaming about density. Gridlock is not efficient at any population density.

Land use, and especially transit oriented land use and the capacity of transit into the said area is inextricably linked. What happens when the operational capacity is exceeded to the point transit is intolerable? People will turn to private vehicles in a community that will have been designed to be unaccommodating to them, which only contributes further to the gridlock they began driving to escape from.

I think you are completely correct on this. Making the stations larger to accomodate bigger trains and buying more trains is much more cheap and easy to handle for a city than the consequences of sprawl, the astronomical expenses in all kinds of infrastructure needed to create new buildable land and the very costly extensions on transitways, the gridlock and the pollution caused by more cars on the roads.

Create density around the light rail stations is the best thing Calgary can and surelly will do in the near future (intensely), because the centralisec urban structure, in what respects office jobs and the very well developed public transit system Calgary has, just begs for it.

It doesn't work that way, you can't just keep adding more and more longer trains until all are satisfied because the surface crossings and reduced speed at which the LRT operates through the core are a hard limit we have already hit. And obviously a train can't be longer than a city block downtown.

Trains already get backed up all the way to SAIT.

Good point, I think this would prevent for a while the debelopment around the stations until the underground light rail gets built.

I think that the residential debelopment should focus more on the downtown and the areas surounding it while development around the stations isn't feaseble. Afterwards when the light rail is upgraded I would say development around the stations would be perfectly possible.

This condos seem to be for the students that work in the university, I wouldn't oppose their construction right now.

i'm not opposed to it being built, there are already high-rise apartments nearby - I just think the degree of intensification that is being planned along an LRT route that is already at the breaking point is planning at its worst.

When most cities look to TOD they are looking to improve utilization of a poorly utilized transit resource or planning for TOD from day one on a new one. Calgary is approaching TOD with an LRT system that is breaking under the strain of existing ridership and just pretending it can effectively absorb more.

Wouldn't it be nice if the people who worked at the U, or in Research Park/ Smart Tech bought the condos at this planned development and walked to work and school, walked to their neighbourhood services and appointments and didn't add to the CTrain's "breaking point" which is a term I don't believe represents the reality of the situation.

In the time I have lived in my house I have worked in seven different locations for four different companies, how many home owners are going to relocate every time they change jobs? To say nothing of two-income families. One of my relatives worked for eight different companies in the last decade, the life of a contractor.

And how do you describe the C-Train at rush hour or over-all capacity outlook?

Where does the next capacity increase come from after the addition of four car trains, which will only partially catch up with present peak demand?

The C-Train is successful, but it doesn't have infinite capacity, it is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. (that analogy has to apply to something)

I understand the point Policy Wonk had made and it is a valid concern. In the land-use and transportation planning nexus, I think it would fall on the transportation side. Increasing the capacity or speed of the CTrain is something I was actually thinking about last week, I had an interesting thought; just like our urban form maybe we should go up rather than out. Are there any metro systems that use double-decker trains? The closest I can think of is the RER. Bi-level trains could make the CTrain's high-level platforms a useful feature after-all. However, the heights of our tunnels might rule this option out.

Excellent investment property. You'll never have a problem renting it out.