Quote:
Originally Posted by brucester4
Chernin has been promising to build something there since at least 2018, I just don't feel he is serious about the project. Something more than a parking lot and beer garden should be there by now.
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Welcome brucester4! What you say is somewhat true, and this isn't the first proposal he's had for this area. As previously mentioned, his projects are notoriously slow to start, for various reasons (scale, market conditions, council, NIMBY's, etc.) I'm not sure I'd say he isn't serious about developing this lot, though, as he's not making any money on it being a parking lot. This lot has a very long history of proposals that didn't happen.
The first was Harbourview Apartments ~ 1996 (I think that was the name) - 13 Storeys. This one was a simple case of market conditions not being favourable at the time.
One former proposal, The Dorchester Condos ~2004 - 12 Storeys - $10M, was ready to go to council for approval and permits, and would have broken ground immediately upon receiving those with enough purchase interest to make it a successful build, but got killed by NIMBY's, mostly from the Northend, who wanted to protect the view from the centreline of Dorchester St, and other viewcones, all of which were introduced
after word of Chernin's proposal being ready reached the streets. Hence the Northend Secondary Planning Strategy in the MPS. This lot had previously been in the Downtown Waterfront Zone (DWZ), which has no height restrictions.
Chernin's response was to lower the height and expand the project, Spanish Gates ~2008 - 8 Storeys, multiple buildings (condos, hotel, office, parking garage) - $44M, but market conditions shifted and the damage of the last minute viewcones had been done. People were skeptical of this proposal because of the failure of the previous one to be built. People started questioning Chernin's ability to have a successful development, as if he hadn't developed anything before in the city.
That all went silent until the library entered the discussion, and market conditions had improved.
The problem with this one is council has been dragging their heels when it comes to the library. The province claimed they didn't get the initial funding request, and when the accessibility design code update resulted in changes to the design, increasing the square footage, council wouldn't even find out how much it would cost because they were scared that the other levels of government wouldn't fund their part of the library build, even though the vote wasn't on approving the new cost of the library, as that wasn't known yet. Most wouldn't entertain the thought of this being a phased development, where whatever was ready first (office, hotel, apartments, library) would be built first.
Chernin has his faults, that's no secret, but council really dropped the ball since having the library on the waterfront was first mentioned. I'll admit there were times I thought Chernin went too quiet on the rest of this proposal. But with the library not funded, and the development not being phased (for whatever reason), there were other aspects obviously at play. There was another proposed building, not on the waterfront, that thought about including the library in their proposal as well, though ultimately decided against it. That was probably for the better considering how things went.
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