[trueviking]

Ha ha. Yeah I deserve it.

The parking isn’t even for the building. It’s a remnant because it’s not legal to build within 30m of a main line.

I’ll totally give you the setback. It’s the only thing that makes it ‘suburban’ in my mind. Wouldn’t be my choice, and I can’t defend it, but I get why it was nonnegotiable. The site is an island in a sea of surface parking lots. And it likely will be for a long time. If it was surrounded by buildings built to the property line, I’m sure they wouldn’t have felt the need for it. It may even be a nice little pocket park on the lane if the rest of the lots were built up. It’s odd because it is seen in isolation, like a suburban building.

I do think it’s pretty unrealistic to expect every office building to have retail units. It’s not a public building. They could have built it in the suburbs. They almost did. I’m glad it has a huge street facing atrium and 10’ high windows into the labs. It was a battle to get that. It has more dialogue with the sidewalk than any other building on Lombard.

Compare it to the NRC labs on the other side of downtown. Or the labs near HSC. They are fortresses.