Quote:
Originally Posted by IanWatson
The Thiels sold the building. I can't see this one happening as proposed. Office vacancy is too high in the city.
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It's probably for the best. Hopefully heritage protections will be improved before the next office space gold rush when a bunch of the current leases run out. There's Cogswell and a bunch of vacant waterfront land so it's odd to tear down one of the most developed blocks in the whole city. I would guess that it only seemed attractive because of a lack of other parcels of land available with highrise office zoning.
The city is growing and there needs to be more of a push from the municipality to open up new commercial areas instead of building out a solid blob of office space in the old pre-1950's business district. Instead most of push seems to come in the other direction, from people in all of the neighbourhoods who don't want their area to change. It's fine to want to preserve parts of the city but it needs to be done in a fine-grained way and there have to be release valves somewhere when growth is pushing 10,000 a year. It also makes sense to thoughtfully channel the growth into some residential areas to improve walkability to local shops and services. The South End is pretty underserved for example, with no clear focus beyond Morris/University. Most of the older people don't care about this because they view their neighbourhood as a place where you own a Victorian house to yourself and drive to stuff in your car, but that is not going to work as well or be as desirable in the future.