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Originally Posted by JM1
I am not opposed to tall buildings in this area but several things spring to mind.
1. Some of these buildings are on very small footings. I look at the footprint for the Claridge Icon and wonder how it will ever support 40+ stories. I believe this area used to be swamp, so I wonder how easy it will be to keep these buildings straight.
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The O-Train cut is in bedrock, so bedrock is not that deep.
A bigger problem is the amount of parking that is required, leading to deep foundations for all the extra underground parking levels. This thing is going to act like a giant pit that will constantly have to be pumped out.
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2. The infrastructure is not there. Roads are definitely not there so all these people better take transit. But this leads to other problems. Try catching a bus from Carling and Preston to go East. The 101 and 102 make all sorts of irritating twists and turns before they get on the transitway. The Carling intersection with Bronson is already a nightmare at rush hours.
3. Expansion of the O-train is still years away, and accomodating this kind of population probably requires a direct connection to downtown (no transfer at Bayview).
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I would suggest that the passenger loads of students transferring at Bayview right now far exceed anything that these buildings could produce. Moreover, this will be going in the "non-peak" direction as far as the O-Train is concerned (the O-Train's peak and non-peak directions are related to Carleton University, so its peak directions of travel are towards it in the morning and away from it in the afternoon).
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4. Blasting required to (eventually) twin the O-train track will wreak havoc on the foundations of these tall condominiums (which are already supported by very small footings).
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Can probably be done with rock hammers... and since the foundations of the buildings will be so deep anyway, it likely won't matter one bit.
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5. A tall building at the Dow Honda site and/or the Civic Parking lot (champagne and Carling) will likely make it very difficult to make a future connection between the Bayview/Carling O-train and a Westbound Carling LRT (which would likely need to be a no-transfer connection).
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Amazingly, the City might actually be doing something about that - though at the last minute, of course, despite being warned about it by numerous activist types whom the City never listens to when they raise an issue only to do what they recommended years later at greater cost, inconvenience, grief, etc. The City did try to secure a corner triangle, though whether that has been successful I can't recall.
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Whether the Col By runs alongside Carling or alongside the lake, there will still be the same amount of Tulip space. Far more picturesque closer to the water I would think....
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