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Posted: Jun 18, 2012, 7:23 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2010
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Quote:
Planning department OKs 30-storey ‘SoHo Italia’ condo
By David Reevely, The Ottawa Citizen June 18, 2012 3:20 PM
OTTAWA — New plans for a controversial 30-storey building at the south end of Preston Street have the nod from the city’s planning department, says the architect working on the plans.
Mastercraft Starwood’s “SoHo Italia” condo tower would be the tallest thing on Preston, at least for now, and architect Rod Lahey said he hopes it’ll define how the land rush around the Carling O-Train station affects Little Italy.
“We’ve really gone through an amazing process. More detailed than anything I’ve ever gone through, and I’ve worked on some sensitive sites,” Lahey said. He thinks the city’s goal was to establish ground rules for building designs in the area, and other would-be developers will have an easier time if they follow the SoHo Italia model. Designers and city staff spent days in meetings, hammering out the details, he said.
“What you’re going to see in this cluster of buildings … is an intensification around the transit station, which is what the city wants, and a transformation of Little Italy,” Lahey said. “I think you’ll see more retail, not just restaurants. It’s kind of like what we’ve seen in the [ByWard] Market, where there’s been change and a lot more people but it hasn’t changed the essence of the Market.”
Mastercraft Starwood first proposed a 36-storey building, which would have been the tallest in Ottawa, with a cultural institution like a museum of Italian-Canadiana on the bottom few floors. After a hostile reception — and the realization somebody else would have to actually run the museum — the company retrenched and proposed a 29-storey building. Now it’s up one floor again, with a more usual three-floor “podium” for stores and offices at the bottom, pools and party rooms, for residents above that, and then condos the rest of the way up.
The plan triples the width of the sidewalk that’s adjacent to the site now, Lahey said, and creates a small plaza that should bring life to a dead stretch of the street now.
But the site is zoned for a building about two-thirds as tall as Mastercraft Starwood is proposing.
“I think we’re at a point where we can start having a conversation about design, as opposed to height,” Lahey said. “What we hope to prove with this is that with proper design and a nice podium, the height doesn’t matter very much. If it’s 12, 20, or 30 storeys, it doesn’t make that much difference.”
At a certain point, a building is just tall, Lahey said. What matters when you reach that stage is what’s happening on the levels people can readily see from the ground. In the SoHo Italia’s case, an earlier version of the plans included five floors of parking garage above ground level. The current version puts all that parking underground, at considerable expense.
“I don’t have a dollar amount but it would be something like six months of construction added to the schedule,” Lahey said. “You’d be adding millions.”
But it makes for a very different building at street level, he said, one that’s a lot better than the initial idea. The plans head to city council’s planning committee for approval June 26.
In the meantime, the SoHo Italia proposal has been surpassed, at least on paper, by an idea from Claridge for a 42-storey condo tower on the east side of Preston. To the west, overlooking the O-Train tracks, Dow Honda is selling its property to Richcraft. On the other side of the tracks, builders including Mastercraft Starwood and Domicile Developments have more condos at various stages of approvals.
It’s all coming ahead of a final version of a community design plan, a city document that’s supposed to guide redevelopment of the old light industrial land around the rail line.
The final version isn’t done yet and isn’t due for city council’s approval till February anyway. Drafts call for taller buildings close to the Carling O-Train station — to take advantage of a major transit line that’s eventually supposed to be part of the electric light-rail system — but the details haven’t been settled yet.
Preston itself is supposed to be restricted to much shorter buildings, to preserve its traditional main-street feel. But by the time the plan’s done, important parts of it could be moot because of what’s already been approved.
Calls to Councillor Diane Holmes and the Preston Street merchants’ association, both of whom have been critical of earlier versions of the building proposal, weren’t immediately returned.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/News/Ot...032/story.html
I like the part where Lahey basically acknowledges the above-ground parkade was a terrible idea that was just about cutting corners (and costs). A conspiracy theorist might wonder if this was deliberately done so that Planning Department types would devote the lion's share of their efforts to righting that one egregious wrong in the proposal, and lay off the height issue? Kind of like the tactic of planting a few obvious questions in a presentation so the bigwig gets to feel smart and useful for "catching them" while the presenter is already set with the answer in hand.
Last edited by McC; Jun 18, 2012 at 7:42 PM.
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