41 Wilson Street | 103, 101 and 100 m | 3 x 30 fl | Under Construction

[PaperSun]

Great pics, I am very excited about this project and this part of downtown. Finally proper development.

[TheHonestMaple]

It's certainly starting to feel like city building these days downtown. Between the dozens of new buildings going up, LRT kicking off.... good things are coming to this city.

[SteelTown]

Thanks for the photo update!

I'm guessing there will be another crane?

[TheRitsman]

Originally Posted by SteelTown

Thanks for the photo update!

I'm guessing there will be another crane?

There will have to be at least 1 more, but I'd guess 2 cranes for the full footprint.

[TheHonestMaple]

Yes, I think you can actually see in some of the pics where the second one is planned to go. Northeast corner, you can see that they have begin excavating some soil there.

[Beedok]

Very exciting. Totally going to change the impression that part of downtown gives.

[TheHonestMaple]

Taken today.

[Innsertnamehere]

The beautiful thing of no parking levels - already above ground!!

[ScreamingViking]

Cranes... more cranes!
To be followed in future by "Trains... more trains!"
(I guess I'm an urban zombie... the video at that link may be scary to some)

These aerial updates are great.

[TheHonestMaple]

Second crane base is on site, and they've already poured the concrete for some walls on the south side.

[Wigs]

How many towers are they building at once?

[urban_planner]

Originally Posted by Wigs

How many towers are they building at once?

Probably all 3. I believe two of the 3 are sold out and shouldn't be hard to sell the 3rd when it's well into construction.

[Innsertnamehere]

They have done shoring for the 3rd tower, but there isn’t really active construction on that side of the site yet.

[SFUVancouver]

Keep meaning to take photos, but there are already columns up along Wilson St. The speed of this project is making my head spin. Turns out not excavating halfway to the earth's core and building a complex and irregular below grade parking structure really speeds up a project.

When folks talk about how reducing parking requirements or not requiring underground parking have a positive knock-on effect on affordability, the speed of this project helps illustrate that argument.

[TheRitsman]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Keep meaning to take photos, but there are already columns up along Wilson St. The speed of this project is making my head spin. Turns out not excavating halfway to the earth's core and building a complex and irregular below grade parking structure really speeds up a project.

When folks talk about how reducing parking requirements or not requiring underground parking have a positive knock-on effect on affordability, the speed of this project helps illustrate that argument.

This is a huge benefit of reduced parking minimums. In this case the parking is just above grade which is suboptimal, but the result is the same, faster construction and reduced costs. Imagine if this development had no parking or little parking, we could see residential units under construction in a couple of months. Compare that to Cobalt where it took 14 months just to get to grade. In this case the first few floors are commercial and parking, which means months before residential units get built.

Parking requirements have a lot of consequences that are not really considered by those who think parking is basically a necessity, and should be required by law. What's even more crazy is that those who defend parking minimums are usually the freedom of choice, free market types, when they're really just "free market" for things they think will benefit them, and actually pro-heavy-regulation when it will benefit them.

Reduced or abolished parking minimums are actually an incredibly free market "small-c" conservative policy. One I support vehemently.

There are so many benefits to reduced parking minimums that I can't really understand why anyone would be against it unless they haven't really thought about all the negatives of parking regulation. No matter who you are, even if you drive everywhere you stand to benefit from reduced parking minimums. The only people who lose out are those who want to live an incompatible life of living downtown and drive everywhere everywhere, akin to someone living in Binbrook and wanting to take trams everywhere.

[Innsertnamehere]

Cobalt was unusual in that they had huge dewatering issues which added a ton of time.

The general rule of thumb for basement levels is 1 month down, 1 month up. So a 4-level underground garage would generally take about 8 months to complete.

Television City for example has 5 levels of underground, with excavation starting a few weeks ago. I expect it will hit grade next August or so.

Nautique in Burlington has 6-7 levels of underground and took 12 months from excavation start to being above grade.

It's also important to remember that just because no parking is required, it does not mean that builders will proceed with 900-unit developments with no parking. I imagine the parking situation here wouldn't have actually been that different even if 0 parking was required.

Where it does make a huge difference is in smaller projects where providing parking is challenging and expensive. Think buildings like 11 Roberts, Cannon St Lofts, and Radio City. Those projects would pencil a lot easier with no parking requirements and likely would have been built with little to no parking if it had not been required.

Developers of large buildings will likely continue to provide decent amounts of parking as it's relatively efficient to build and helps sell units.

What's happening in Toronto post-parking minimum removals is builders are continuing to build parking, but usually only 2-3 levels of underground as it becomes much more expensive after that, and they build whatever fits in that amount of parking.

[WhipperSnapper]

The trade off with above ground parking are huge podiums. I guess short term affordability issues take precedence over long term urban blandness. What separates downtown Hamilton from a greenfield masterplan are the intimated space within blocks/developments available to explore. Developments like this do nothing to expand on those spaces.

Whether you are one to walk down, for example, an alley or not. They are a visible presence in your peripheral

[TheHonestMaple]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

The trade off with above ground parking are huge podiums. I guess short term affordability issues take precedence over long term urban blandness. What separates downtown Hamilton from a greenfield masterplan are the intimated space within blocks/developments available to explore. Developments like this do nothing to expand on those spaces.

Whether you are one to walk down, for example, an alley or not. They are a visible presence in your peripheral

I agree, they are incredibly ugly and make the streetscape hell.

[Beedok]

If the ground floor still has retail and the out appearance is nice it doesn’t really matter much to me if the floors above are parking, offices, or residential. There was a building in Ottawa I thought was a squat office building for ages, then realised it was actually a parking garage. But, unless you go inside, floors are floors.

[Innsertnamehere]

above grade parking if shielded by units is fine, IMO. Cobalt has above-grade parking and you would never know it from the street, for example.

It'll largely be the same here, with units shielding the parking from the street.

Where parking becomes ugly is when it isn't shielded, which is common in a lot of US cities like Chicago or Austin.