488 Upper Wellington Street | ? | 6 fl | Under Construction

[Innsertnamehere]

New midrise on Upper Wellington:

DA-22-001

To demolish the existing bldg. and construct a 6 storey (21.81 m) mixed-use residential development containing 261 units with 2 retail commercial units at grade. Includes 239 parking spaces, 42 at grade and 199 within the building’s first 2 storeys.

[johnnyhamont]

Is that a typo? That implies 261 residential units on 4 floors, with a small footprint that if the site includes 42 parking spaces, which would be impossible. Is that a 16 or 26 storey building?

Edit: upon further examination, it looks more likely that these are the real numbers, but that the site also includes the adjacent building at 500 Upper Wellington. This is going to be a really long building with 100m (330ft) of street frontage and 200 indoor parking spaces in the first two floors. Also, about 70 units on each of floors 3-6. A really welcome addition to the Upper Wellington corridor though!

[catcher_of_cats]

I must say that I am not a fan of this city allowing the first few floors of every single building to be parking for vehicles.

Not a fan at all !!
_

Has any municipal worker in the planning/building department ever ventured to the cities around us and see what is possible?

[TheHonestMaple]

Agreed it's very strange, and quite unique to Hamilton. Looks terrible and does not create an inviting space for pedestrians. However Kiwi condos seems to have done an ok job at hiding it, Marquee on the other hand...

[lachlanholmes]

The current building on site is the old Mountain Police Station. Looks like it was a nice little mid century modern structure before the unsympathetic 1990s addition at the back and the overall deterioration over time. Here's a picture I found from the HPS Historical Society's Facebook page:


photo source


As for this development, I'm eager to see what it looks like but have some initial thoughts...


- It's owned by Fengate / LiUNA, so I would not be surprised to see this be another Graziani + Corazza designed project;

- Fengate acquired this site around February of 2021, and that transaction included 500 Upper Wellington as well. Measuring the property boundaries on the City's online map gives a massive site size of just 8,500 square metres;

- Whenever the City sold off 488 Upper Wellington (2019, I believe?), it appears they sold it with about 3 metres taken off on both the Inverness and Upper Wellington frontages for road widening, which is strange, because as far as I can tell, there is no official widening planned for any of Inverness and none for this section of Upper Wellington. As well, it appears there's a cut out of the property parcel at the corner for a daylight triangle;

- Six storeys is really a squandering of this site. I take it that Fengate don't want to bother with an ZBLA and OPA, but developing this under the as-of-right zoning really sucks considering the limitations. For one of the first intensification sites along a mountain arterial, this is a bad opening salvo and I hope that it doesn't set a timid chain reaction for similar future sites;

- I agree that shoving the parking into an above-grade structure isn't ideal... but considering the enormous cost difference between above-grade and below-grade, I could probably live with mitigation efforts (like surrounding the parking with residential units) and discouragement rather than an outright prohibition on the practice. Getting rid of parking minimums and going from there as to how any proposed spaces are integrated would be best, though;

- There's a fair number of nice mature trees along both Upper Wellington and Inverness. I would hope that an effort is made to retain them rather than put up dinky little new ones when all is said and done. The trees along Upper Wellington are certainly within the road widening width, but the Inverness ones may fall just outside of it. Presuming that the City doesn't plan on widening the (at most) 120 metres of Upper Wellington it could, the road widening portion would hopefully be kept as a landscaped zone.

[TheRitsman]

I think this is pretty common and expected. Even in Toronto outside the central downtown you see a lot of midrises. These are the perfect sites for them because they are already zoned to that height, the properties are more affordable making a shorter building more economical and the incredible density of downtown just isn't needed because both the transit sucks (in comparison) and walkability and cyclablility just aren't equal. Add minimum parking requirements and you get a smaller mid rise development with this weird set up. If it were 6 storeys with fewer parking spots along the major transit routes this could start to increase demand and justification for improved transit service connection to the LRT and/or A-Line service.

[lachlanholmes]

Originally Posted by TheRitsman

I think this is pretty common and expected. Even in Toronto outside the central downtown you see a lot of midrises. These are the perfect sites for them because they are already zoned to that height, the properties are more affordable making a shorter building more economical and the incredible density of downtown just isn't needed because both the transit sucks (in comparison) and walkability and cyclablility just aren't equal. Add minimum parking requirements and you get a smaller mid rise development with this weird set up. If it were 6 storeys with fewer parking spots along the major transit routes this could start to increase demand and justification for improved transit service connection to the LRT and/or A-Line service.

No, you don't need downtown levels of density - but six storeys is way too timid. It really should be something more like 12 to 14 storeys. It would do wonders for unit count, economies of scale, commercial viability, etc.

I'll also note that the typical Toronto 'Avenues' midrise has now been well studied and has a lot of flaws, particularly with the envisioned height of 6 storeys resulting in projects simply not penciling out, angular planes driving up construction cost and killing potential units, and the limited height resulting in fatter, longer buildings.

Getting rid of parking minimums is excellent and will help with some of the economic barriers to constructing midrises along avenues, but the fact simply is that the built form (incl. height) is a problem.

[lachlanholmes]

Quite delayed posting of these images, but the old police station was demolished a month or two ago. Some photos taken on April 11th, 2022:

[lachlanholmes]

We're finally getting a proper look at this proposal with it headed before the Committee of Adjustment on May 26th, 2022.

Summary of proposed variances:





Mercifully, the architect here isn't G+C, but instead CORE.

Here's the site plan. It's not terrible, but there's obvious room for improvement:



Ground floor plan. There are four two bedroom townhouse units fronting Inverness, while the Upper Wellington includes two retail spaces each sized about 315 square metres, and the main residential lobby:



Onto the elevations:





Finally, some massing views:

[Innsertnamehere]

first building permits have been issued here for a geothermal system, with two more in process. Anyone know if there is activity on site?

[Fruitloops]

Construction is underway. Excavators clearing. Looks like they are scraping on top of escarpment bedrock.

[Innsertnamehere]

https://financialpost.com/globe-news...nt-in-hamilton

LiUNA and partners break ground on purpose-built rental development in Hamilton

HAMILTON, Ontario, June 15, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Labourers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) recently celebrated the groundbreaking for a new purpose-built rental development at 500 Upper Wellington Street in Hamilton, Ontario.

Article content
In line with LiUNA’s community-building efforts throughout Canada, the United States, and around the world, this rental development is part of LiUNA’s ongoing work to drive the revitalization of Hamilton. The LiUNA Pension Fund of Central and Eastern Canada (LPFCEC) is the lead investor in 500 Upper Wellington Street, which is being built in partnership with Fengate Asset Management and Ingenuity.

[TheRitsman]

From Fengate's LinkedIn apparently

[TheRitsman]

This site is active with crews and shoring rigs if seems like. This is a big site!

[NortheastWind]

New 261 unit rental apartment to help revitalize Hamilton: Investor
https://www.inthehammer.com/new-261-...lton-investor/

[urban_planner]

The vertical structure of a tower crane is up on this site.

[LikeHamilton]

This should be changed to Under Construction.

[HamiltonBoyInToronto]

the base for the second crane is also ready to go with the first piece already installed

[ScreamingViking]

I drove by the pit for this on the weekend. Had forgotten something was going up here.

[Chronamut]

Originally Posted by ScreamingViking

I drove by the pit for this on the weekend. Had forgotten something was going up here.

Probably because the design is easily.. forgettable.