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Originally Posted by McC
really?! I always assumed the perspective was westbound, because those buildings look much taller than what was allowed for Westboro Collection at Scott and McRae
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I don't think the illustrators paid any heed to existing development plans, or for that matter even knew of them. You have to recall that the DOTT study was carried out by engineering consultants with very little involvement from any planners. I know from experience that engineering consultants seldom bother to pay attention to land use plans and their illustrators would have even less reason to. There's no particular reason for them to have known unless they had an unusual degree of thoughtfulness to go to the trouble to find out.
The illustration verges on being absurd because another of the buildings (the one peaking behind the conifers) occupies the spot where that 5-storey building was built opposite the station a few years ago, and is unlikely to be replaced any time soon. The middle building roughly corresponds to the Westboro Collection site and the far one to the Trailhead site.
Anyway, what you're seeing in this illustration is first and foremost the Athlone Bridge (I've seen a higher-res version somewhere where one can actually make out the word 'Athlone'). At the time, it was common for a #2 artic to be parked on the Athlone bridge since Westboro was a short-ending/starting point for the #2 (which it isn't any longer, and the artics have been replaced by shorter hybrids). I imagine the base picture they used had an artic sitting right there. The coniferous trees you see on the upper right correspond to the coniferous trees just west of the station in the Scott Street corridor. The shadows of the pedestrians at left also correspond to it being an eastbound perspective. Up on the left you can see the bunker-like housing for the northside elevator shaft; the one on the southside is somewhat further away from the corresponding corner and would not be so easily visible from down in the Transitway trench. Finally, the most distant bridge structure is "shiny" - that's the utility bridge east of Westboro Station (the Tweedsmuir and pedestrian bridges seem to get lost in each other).
The one thing that is out of place is all the vegetation on the left. Right now it's a sloped concrete slab with bits of crumbling limestone set in it. My guess is that the illustrator envisioned replacing the ramp with more attractive landscaping.
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(although I wouldn't be surprised if they've torn up their last plans after learning Katherine Hobbs position on Soho Italia, swapping the stubbier compromise tower for one taller then their original proposal)
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It's been suspended for awhile, and long before Hobbs was elected. I have no idea why. Perhaps Ashcroft has made the environment too toxic for awhile. Other than localized objections from those on Clifton Rd and possibly a few on Tweedsmuir, there wasn't any great outcry about it because the plan generally conformed to the CDP.
The "compromise" frankly looks better than the original: the original was sort of like a pyramid with a short stack shoved on top. It looked like it had been designed to be shortened. What the compromise did was reduce the height but also reduced the pyramidal appearance by consolidating a few storeys at at a time. All they really needed to do was knock off the upper storeys of the stack.
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