Renovation of 95-109 James Street North

[durandy]

Originally Posted by Jon Dalton

I am no fan boy of these developers but I support their right to do what they see fit with their property. It's not a parking lot and it won't be fenced off for the next 10 years so I wouldn't complain too much.

sorry Jon Dalton, nothing personal but this is killing me. Of course they can build whatever shitbox they want to build. Our purpose as engaged citizens interested in urban development is to critique these developers' decisions based on what is possible. I'd say we could do a whole lot better than this. God bless them for exercising their rights, but still.

[durandy]

Originally Posted by thistleclub

"Beume had held onto the parking lot for decades waiting for the area to slowly gentrify."

Secret sauce.

Seriously, though, Beaume & CoreUrban have the benefit of being full-time developers, which probably changes the calculus. There is also likely capital and momentum on their side.

95-105 James North were acquired in Nov 2013, finished in July 2016 and have only just started to sprout occupants.

The Empire Times designs were unveiled in Sept 2013; at that point, Reardons had been sold and 31 King William was up for grabs for $500K (it was bought initially by Synergy Developments). CoreUrban bought 14 James North in Dec 2013. The Reardons building (37-39) was purchased by CoreUrban in Sept 2014, and the properties from 31-35 were obtained in the months following, with construction starting in Spring 2015 (by which time the Empire Times was fully occupied, CoreUrban was haggling over the 10-14 James North properties and commencing work on the Textile Building renos) and essentially finished now.

So that's three Core Urban restoration projects plus a six-storey infill in the time it took to get 95-105 wrapped. (That probably wasn't the plan. From the Mar 2014 Spec article: “The hope is to have the three new retail spaces finished about a year from now.” 29 months later…)

The condition of the buildings is probably a factor. The Framing Gallery had been occupied up until about 20 years ago, but seemed to have solid bones; the remaining buildings had been continuously occupied and were not in egregious disrepair. The shots I’ve seen of the inside of the 37-39 do not look especially dissolute — the stone and brick appear to be in great shape. 41-43 King William had also been continuously occupied and were in reasonably good shape. The same was true of 10 George, 50 Murray Street and 86 Herkimer before them.

95-105, meanwhile, was described as “a post-apocalyptic scene” whose upper floors had been vacant for half a century or more. IIRC the entire face of that building was replaced so maybe those restorations were unusually cost-intensive. Some renos are like that.

I'm kind of meh on this infill but would not be surprised if there were shades of grey.

first it was location, now it's the developer's cred and/or the building? I dunno man, I was inside the upper Reardons floors. It was a hellhole. I agree though about the developers. Core are professionals who are on top of their game. Milne, Potocic et al may simply have no idea what they're doing.

[davidcappi]

Maybe it's not necessarily the same developers. Maybe it's a partnership with the brewery that is the force behind this building.

[thistleclub]

Originally Posted by durandy

first it was location, now it's the developer's cred and/or the building? I dunno man, I was inside the upper Reardons floors. It was a hellhole. I agree though about the developers. Core are professionals who are on top of their game. Milne, Potocic et al may simply have no idea what they're doing.

In case you had missed my "shades of grey" comment, I'm just casting about for possible contributing factors. From what I gather of urban redevelopment, there are often variables at play, and sometimes hidden complexities or calamitous setbacks. Perhaps that is the case here.

As I indicated earlier, I'm happy to have people restoring old buildings with care rather than squatting on decrepit properties for decades because they're playing the long game, waiting to make one big score. (Property speculators don't lack vision. It's just the kind of vision that's disputed.) I'm generally happy to see rotting properties revived. It's better, in my mind, than floating a rendering and then playing tax angles for 10-20 years while waiting for a gravel lot holding to mature or a building to collapse.

By the same token, I'm comfortable with critiques of built form, and accept that not everyone has a uniform aesthetic worldview. And sometimes, as I say, there's room for more than a white hat/black hat scenario. (I respect the work that CoreUrban has done even though I find their "old or new facade with a glass cap" motif a little tedious, and I credit them with enough creativity to think that they could imagine at least one other outcome for a restoration, though I accept that maybe that's just their thing.)

Does anyone know if there is a citizen's component to the DRP?

[Jon Dalton]

Originally Posted by durandy

sorry Jon Dalton, nothing personal but this is killing me. Of course they can build whatever shitbox they want to build. Our purpose as engaged citizens interested in urban development is to critique these developers' decisions based on what is possible. I'd say we could do a whole lot better than this. God bless them for exercising their rights, but still.

And it's our right to criticize them as much as we want if we don't like their building. I just see it going wrong if the city tries to impose stricter controls on building form and heights. The zoning we have seems to do more to prevent good things from happening.

I wonder why they don't think it's profitable to make a 2 or 3 storey building? Maybe it's the amount of parking that would be required. I also recall that they wanted some kind of shortcut with the permit process for building the same height and footprint as what was torn down.

[davidcappi]

I can confirm that the building height is most accurately depicted by this render and from the schematic drawings posted earlier. This is exciting news because the windows of the new building will be consistent with the storefronts on either side. The entrance is punched in and will feature a "cool tile feature wall" that acts as an entryway. So based on this drawing we know that the brick facade will extend up to roughly half way up the second floor of the adjacent buildings. That is followed up by a small step back, and the deeply pitched modern mansard roof that will extend up to roughly half way up the third storey of the adjacent buildings.

For a one storey building it seems like they were consciously trying to make this building look a lot bigger from the street. What I am more excited for (than the facade) is what will probably be a really cool interior space on James. I wonder who the restaurant tenant will be. Also the patio at the rear is described as "sunken". More on that as I learn more.

[Bubba9000]

Yes the outcome of this exact address is puzzling. Who would want to build a one storey building between a row of taller buildings with ideal historic character?

Guess what? No one! The owners were denied permission to build taller than the previous building. In fact, they were told they weren't even allowed to rebuild the exact same shape and size of what was there before. It was only through great effort they were able to have the rules bent to allow what is coming. The reasoning was so stupid and bureaucratic it would make one's head explode.

The only way they could have the rules changed would be to spend more time (years) and money (tens of thousands) than was available, to hire the big guns and wait out the process. This is the territory of large established developers with deep pockets.

This was going down around the time of Tim's publicized "[city] should get the f*** out of the way" comment last fall sometime.

I don't recall all the details, nor is it my place to disclose them, but these guys are doing the best they can under the circumstances.

Note the taller buildings took forever too, didn't they? Yep, that was the city's fault too. Apparently weren't zoned residential on the upper floors. That only took an extra ~2 years to sort out. Anyone else would have left town by now.

[Jon Dalton]

That doesn't surprise me in the least. The big developers just budget a few hundred grand to throw at the city to make those rules go away. Small time or medium sized developers don't have the same wiggle room and while they may be well financed to build the building they have their hands tied by the city.

[davidcappi]

The smaller guys are usually acting as a smaller team with more responsibility as well, whereas the big devs have dedicated people paid purely to deal with the city and nothing else.

[Dr Awesomesauce]

What a shame. Not surprising in the least, however...

[davidcappi]

[davidcappi]

[thomax]

10/19/2016 by Joe, on Flickr

[davidcappi]

Really excited about this one. I noticed they're laying the structural blocks in a decorative pattern. They must be planning to leave them exposed on the inside/paint them when the building is done.

[Dr Awesomesauce]

It's not easy to make cinder block look good but they done did it.

Too bad about the corner unit - hopefully they'll be shamed into doing something about it.

[durandy]

Originally Posted by davidcappi

Really excited about this one. I noticed they're laying the structural blocks in a decorative pattern. They must be planning to leave them exposed on the inside/paint them when the building is done.

I've looked at those pics from every angle I can, and it looks to me like...a concrete block wall. I think you can get guys to put them in for $2 per block. Pretty exciting.

[davidcappi]

I've looked at those pics from every angle I can, and it looks to me like...a concrete block wall

The pattern is three rows of regular blocks, one row of a half block, three rows of regular blocks, one row of a half block... and so on. It's a subtle touch but it's nice.

[King&James]

thankfully the metal fins on the streetfront mean we will see a brick facade . Happy there is some development, but seriously, another floor would have been welcome

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce

It's not easy to make cinder block look good but they done did it.

Too bad about the corner unit - hopefully they'll be shamed into doing something about it.

Agree with both points.

[davidcappi]

A better view of the masonry detail