755 Wonderland Road South - Westmount Mall redevelopment (Approved)

[MolsonExport]

Christ, the cinema is only a decade old. I remember when I moved to London, when the previous cinema was on the second story of the mall next to the food court, in the now demolished wing on the North side of the Mall.

That tetris block rendering is just atrocious. A 12-year old could come up with a more compelling rendering.

[tyeman200]

Originally Posted by haljackey

I think it might be due to the underground parking/infrastructure below the mall itself? You could tear down the mall sure but you'd have to build something in it's place... and the only thing that would fit on a lot that size is... well another mall lol - so you may as well keep the existing mall.

You could put a whole entire subdivision there. Would prefer that over a dead mall. Some small apartments, houses, a small plaza, etc. The opportunities are endless. Look what Old Oak is doing with that massive property on Hihgbury, can't wait to see it finished up.

[jammer139]

Updated zoning application for the Westmount Mall site including some new renders.


I'd have no problem seeing 6-12 additional floors added to most of these buildings in order to get the total number of units higher then 1500. This location is ideal for much higher densities. Hopefully the developer bumps up the application to increase the density.



What is Proposed?
A mixed-use redevelopment of an existing shopping
centre with 900 residential units
•30,000 square metres of office gross floor area
located above the first floor (2ndfloor)
•Policy Areas for development of the surface
parking lots and on top of the existing shopping
centre
•A broad range of residential, commercial, office
and retail uses with the additional uses of
business service establishment, automobile sales
boutique, craft brewery, artisan workshop and a
new proposed use for a call centre


https://london.ca/business-developme...815-wonderland

[CanadianTalk]

And to add to above, the public meeting for this redevelopment will be at the planning committee on June 19th.

https://london.ca/sites/default/file...g%20Notice.pdf

Updated diagrams:

[GreatTallNorth2]

As weird looking as it is, I hope it is built. It would be great to have that density in that location. Surely it would help the retail in the mall as well.

[K85]

weird is right.... I'm legitimately having a hard time wrapping my head around how this looks like, with the mall still there, and the parking lots... It's, I dunno, seems incomplete.

[Djeffery]

I almost want to see it actually look like total Minecraft Weirdness when it gets built lol

[jammer139]

Even better resolution renders for these buildings.


https://london.ca/sites/default/file...Renderings.pdf

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by jammer139

Even better resolution renders for these buildings.


https://london.ca/sites/default/file...Renderings.pdf

Still fronted by parking lots, no walkability. Classic London.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Still fronted by parking lots, no walkability. Classic London.

What would your solution be, assuming you were trying (like these people) to keep a viable mall/office, while adding a thousand residential units to the property? It's also not a known at this point as to whether the owners would also expand on the streetscape at the corner in either or both directions if market conditions permit it. Keep in mind too, this isn't a dead mall. It has a pretty high occupancy level and probably more than a thousand people who work there on a given weekday (mostly professional career people). So I doubt the owners want to demolish the mall and lose those tenants.

[haljackey]

Ya it's pretty yucky inside and out but I guess it's better than nothing. Westmount is underutilized for sure.

I'm still sour they demo'd part of the mall- could have been repurposed into something

[Spoofy]

.

[CanadianTalk]

From a new staff report from City planning staff, "the application has been appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT), and therefore, Council has no jurisdiction to enact a Zoning By-law Amendment or pass an Official Plan Amendment." However, council can still express support of an approval or refusal.

Therefore, planning staff is recommending that Council supports the refusal of the applicant's requested zoning changes that would allow for this redevelopment, and instead support an approval of a less intense redevelopment.

Staff report: https://london.ca/sites/default/file...20%28SW%29.pdf

Staff presentation: https://pub-london.escribemeetings.c...umentId=100050

The main reason for staff's recommendation, according to the report, is that they believe that the applicant's proposed redevelopment is too intense for the area and such intensity should be "directed to more strategic areas of the City such as the Transit Villages, Downtown and Rapid Transit Corridors." The staff report also says that there is too much office space proposed as it should also be directed to the downtown.

This goes to Council's Planning and Environment committee on June 19th.


--------------

The diagram below shows the applicant's proposed heights for this area.





The diagram below shows an overlay of City planning staff's recommended heights for this area.

[jammer139]

This is about the office space mostly. The policy is to not allow large offices outside the downtown. Yet the City had zero issue in moving their own OW and Social Services offices out of the Market Tower downtown to other neighbourhoods. There is a word for that which starts with an "H".


If in fact the WSIB buys the 3M property on Tartan Dr with its 135,000 sq ft of office space and decides to build an addition to add more space in the future, how will the city planners react to that?



I'd be interested in hearing about who appealed to the OLT already. Seems a tad premature given the new zoning hasn't even made it thru to full council yet. What's up with that?

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by jammer139

This is about the office space mostly. The policy is to not allow large offices outside the downtown. Yet the City had zero issue in moving their own ODSP and Social Services offices out of the Market Tower downtown to other neighbourhoods.

Including by the way, a rather large footprint on the main floor of this mall itself.

[jammer139]

At PEC today the developer was the party that has already appealed to the OLT.



I'd be interested in hearing about who appealed to the OLT already. Seems a tad premature given the new zoning hasn't even made it thru to full council yet. What's up with that?[/QUOTE]

[jammer139]

CTV piece on the PEC debate for this proposal.


Yet another example of the current London Plan being out of date with today's business and residential realities.



This will end up being settled at a future OLT hearing in a couple of years.



Interesting to hear during the debate that the movie theatre lease is coming up for renewal and if they don't renew then they will tear it down. There were some rumours a new movie theatre complex was possible for the Penequity site at Wellington and 401 but the new realities of the theatre business has likely killed that thought as well.



https://london.ctvnews.ca/revitaliza...very-1.6448114

[CanadianTalk]

To add to above, planning committee in a 4-1 vote, approved city staff's recommendation, which can be seen in the second picture in my previous post here.

Doesn't really mean that much anyway since the OLT will have the final say.

Goes to full council for a vote on June 27th.

[jammer139]

CBC article on PEC meeting.


Title says it all:

"Council confounded on how to save Westmount Mall while protecting downtown London "

The "Landlord" weighs in with letter to council.






https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/londo...ndon-1.6881989

[haljackey]

Normally I'd agree with city staff on this, but this isn't a new build. It's a revamp of a existing, heavily underutilized site. I guess we'll see what happens.