City Hall Options Final Report

[jammer139]

LFP article on the interest level of rebuilding the City Hall site in partnership with the private sector.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/why-...led-and-what-comes-next?itm_source=index

CTV coverage

https://www.ctvnews.ca/windsor/article/i...-campus-withered-to-just-one-submission/

[Djeffery]

Thread is almost 15 years and as one post says from back then, "I remember we talked about this on here several years ago", so this issue is going on for 20 years or so. We should change the motto to "Dither City".

[MolsonExport]

Reg Cooper Square looks awful.



Reminds me of an Empty Farhi lot.

Unkempt, uninspiring, and not helped at all by that tawdry-looking apartment building.

Probably doesn't attract many users except maybe city hall workers on their smoke breaks.

[jammer139]

Paving stones filled by weeds in all the cracks. You see the same on many houses around the city that made the mistake of putting in paving stone driveways and walkways.

[Snark]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

Thread is almost 15 years and as one post says from back then, "I remember we talked about this on here several years ago", so this issue is going on for 20 years or so. We should change the motto to "Dither City".

Not entirely. This time they got an actual RFPQ out the door and on the street. Have you ever written such a document package? Have you even seen such a document package? For a project of this scope, uniqueness, cost, and public visibility, production of this RFPQ would have involved much involvement from many individuals across many internal departments - lots of effort went into this. So, the City was indeed very serious in moving forward with this project now. If the results had turned out different, then this would have been the first big step to being out of the gate and to the races for the project.

I suspect that the devil in the details in this case is how the terms of reference was written. The industry didn't like it and didn't bite. It does happen from time to time, especially in unique projects such as this.

The next step will be to consult parties (internal and in industry - officially and unofficially), and with that input revise the RFPQ and re-issue it. If that happens, then it will be an indication of the municipality's genuine sense of urgency in this project getting off the ground.

[jammer139]

Council wants a report from staff on why only one bid.


LFP coverage link

The city hopes to fully renovate the existing city hall building from 1971, on top of adding an additional 28,000 square metres (300,000 square feet) of office space and a new publicly-owned parking garage. City staff also wish to include both affordable and market-rate housing. The city has already set aside $125 million for the project, approved during the 2020-23 multi-year budget.

Current 12s City Hall has 16,000 sq meters of space.


https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/poli...lan-yields-only-one-bid?itm_source=index

[Djeffery]

I'd love to see an "artist concept" of what they hope to do down there. I wonder if the current parking garage under Reg Cooper Square already has the ability to be built up on. And do they want to build a new garage podium on top of that and then more office space and possibly housing on top of that, completely blocking the current apartment? I mean, it's not rare for buildings to be looking at each other and "sucks to be them" in the current apartment for losing their view. But it's also a pretty tight space if they build another building right there that you can practically have conversations with from one building to the other.

Plus if they want pushing double the current building in new space, plus housing, plus more parking, this sounds like a pretty impressive building to jam in there. 20 or so floors at the footprint of the current building just for office, let alone the rest. I wanna see how they plan that out so it doesn't look like a jammed in mess. I'm having trouble imagining it.

Maybe they should temporarily move city hall into the 2 empty Bay stores for 6 or 7 years, demo this entire block and start over.

[MolsonExport]

Old City Hall is nothing to look at but is it really all that bad? So what if all the offices don't fit into a single building. Montreal is a far larger city, and it gets by with its (admittedly, far more beautiful) city hall, while leasing space for certain city departments in other buildings.

Just don't let Farhi take this over. If so, he will have completely cornered the market.

[jammer139]

I wonder if they should have started with an architectural design contest of sorts by approaching urban design and architect school programs in Canada with a request to submit artist renders for the site within the constraints. I'm sure a number of schools would love a design contest for their students. Offer an award for the top 3 designs to the student(s) and a prize to the winning school.

They could then use the submissions as a guide to RFP bids going forward.

[jammer139]

What went wrong report released to committee.

About a year ago, the city issued a request for pre-qualification – a process used to screen bidders before inviting formal proposals – for the redevelopment project.
Article content

At the end of the process, city staff said 35 firms expressed interest, 19 attended a site visit, but only two firms submitted bids, one of which was later withdrawn. Rather than proceed with a single bidder, politicians voted to have staff conduct a review on what went wrong.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/what-went-wrong-with-londons-ambitious-city-hall-rebuild-plan

[jammer139]

LFP article on other options possible now to explore.


https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/for-...t-shut-on-a-new-city-hall-site-in-london