Quote:
Originally Posted by spaustin
I went this evening and it was an interesting room (quite a mix of people). I spoke in favour, with the provision that the design needs some tweaks. The current design has become very bulky. The Wentworth is not so much behind Greenvale School as it is overtop of it. A big long rectangle that should be slimmer so that you can actually see around it. It baffles me too that they want to use the exact same materials on the shorter Fairbanks building on the other side of Irishtown. It's like they get a bulk discount or something. Rather than have twins, they should do something different with the Fairbanks to make it interesting. At street level, the Fairbanks is a bit of a mess because it actually has a lot of frontage, but like too many modern building it's one long uniform slab of regularly spaced identical windows and doors. For a location like this, a Founders Corner or Vic like approach should be taken where, at street level, the building is made to feel like several buildings because the facade, materials, windows and doors are varied. A more interesting streetscape would reflect the scale of the surrounding buildings and its Downtown setting.
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Spaustin, your thoughts are bang-on. they need to make changes, not fill the complete footprint, and give Greenvale some breathing space. Interesting that most of the people who attended the meeting were against the development, and most of the on-line comments on various sites are pro the development.