The townhouses are ghastly, but still a huge improvement over what's there (from what I can tell). Can anyone explain why they want to put a chain link fence through the middle of the park?
Love the quote about 'picture yourself living in a quaint french quarter environment that is steps away from small shops and bistros' in the news section of the developers blurb...who writes this stuff. This is Vanier not the Left Bank...talk about making a silk purse out of a sows ear.
Good luck to them...that area needs a good injection of revitilization but call a spade a spade.
Hey, it's close to downtown, close to a traditional main street (that's seen better days), on a pre-war part of the grid, and relatively cheap. It's not about to become Westboro overnight, but I'd say invest now for long-term return. Sooner or later it'll reach the point that Hintonburg/Mechanicsville are at now. And yes, the project leaves a lot to be desired aesthetically.
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The world is so full of a number of things
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
Hey, it's close to downtown, close to a traditional main street (that's seen better days), on a pre-war part of the grid, and relatively cheap. It's not about to become Westboro overnight, but I'd say invest now for long-term return. Sooner or later it'll reach the point that Hintonburg/Mechanicsville are at now. And yes, the project leaves a lot to be desired aesthetically.
I agree with everything you said but the idea that the neighbourhood is some sort of french Parisian bistro on every corner is a real stretch.
True. That kind of hyperbolic spin is even hard to take seriously when thrown at places like Beechwood or Richmond. Sure, they're not Merivale or St. Joseph but that doesn't make them Le Quartier Latin. Give it all time. (Merivale and St. Joseph should be coming around sometime in the late 21st century).
__________________
The world is so full of a number of things
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
As for the project itself, as mentioned by others the townhouses are vomitive. The lofts themselves have one thing going for them, space - they are big for the price they charge. But, they are not very well laid out. Too many of them only come with one bathroom. I'll be curious to see how this project performs. As many have pointed out, it's far from being Paris' left bank but if sales go well, it could burst open the Vanier dam. After all, Vanier is the one remaining urban neighbourhood adjacent to downtown that has still not been thoroughly gentrified.
Not to make it seem as though I have any illusions or delusions about this area but it is the nicest part of Vanier with the possible exception of the area around Mark St. near the Rideau River on the north side of Montreal Rd. in the extension of the North River Rd. corridor.
The homes on and around Granville St. are generally modest, well-kept post-war bungalows. There is also a suburban-style area of fairly new homes (10-15 years old) at the north end of Granville that backs onto Notre-Dame Cemetery (the streets are Pauline-Charron and Ida-Rocheleau).
This is also the area of Vanier that has been the least hard-hit by the massive exodus of Vanier's traditional French-Canadian population to places like Orleans, Rockland and the Quebec side.
The sales office was packed today. They show 8 sales and another 8 reservations. Many of the rubberneckers were neighbours who seemed quite pleased with the project and what it will do to their property values...
Developers love to use words like Manhatten or Euro style,it's all just smoke and mirrors.
Speaking of smoke and mirrors sometimes sales agents in the trailers put ' or 'conditionally sold' on units that they hope will spark a price war. They are hoping that you really want the unit and will bid over the asking price, when the unit was never 'condtionally sold'.
Anyone remember this one? If you go back a few months we talked about how awful the townhouses looked on the rendering. They're finished now and it looks like they're occupying. The turned out even uglier.
And they're all sold out:
The loft building is coming along. It has a funky look to it, as if the 1950's and 1960's have become legitimate architecture to love and cherish as heritage. Even though there's not much substance to this "trend" in my book, this infill mainly works because it's part of a neighbourhood and the site is not too large, so the actual building is in fact a "neighbour". Try doing a project like this with one of the big-box schools they're building nowadays out in the sticks...
Anyone remember this one? If you go back a few months we talked about how awful the townhouses looked on the rendering. They're finished now and it looks like they're occupying. The turned out even uglier.
(photos mine)
People in my entourage who know a thing or two about construction once told me that huge icicles coming down from the roof like that are a sign of poor insulation...
I think the dark treatment on the first floor of the townhomes is a marginal improvement over the rendering. The garages don't seem to pop out quite as much. It does look a little industrial though; they remind me of storage lockers.
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