Central Waterfront District | Waterfront Station - CRAB Park

[Yume-sama]

Build a big one with a hole in the middle! A supertall arch!

[racc]

The whole thing is really embarrassing. What is really needed is an international completion to come up with a really great plan for this area. Even the local completion, Where is the Square, came up with several ideas which are light years better than the current plan, which is looking so 1990's.

http://vancouverpublicspace.ca/index.php/campaigns/urbandesign/index.php?page=wts_gallery

For starters, there is only one additional platform for rail planned. This when high speed rail is looking more and more like a possibility.

The entire surface space should be a large public square lined with businesses and restaurants. It is ridiculous to extend the street network to the water just to allow tour bus parking on the water. Keep the vehicles under the surface. There is only one block in which there is any benefit as far as the view goes and that is the short block between Hastings and Cordova. And funny, that is the one block that they have a photo of. Go a block south, and the view is the same either way.

The examples they use, like Canary Wharfe are much better and provide a lot of pedestrian space that is not interrupted by roads.

If you want to see what a real world class city is doing, look at the Transbay Centre in San Fran.

http://www.transbaycenter.org/transbay/content.aspx?id=323

[Yume-sama]

Racc, it is fairly typical "small thinking" Vancouver, I guess.

We need more ambition.

[Vancity]

in regards to Vancouver thinking small - that's what — about this city. We always talk about wanting to become a "world class" city. But world class cities don't think small. They think big.

Man. We really do need new people in government. People with ambitious plans to move this city forward. It — to always hear of other cities receiving ambitious projects, while Vancouver just sits around.

[EastVanMark]

The renderings are plain and boring. As usual. This is a huge opportunity to inject some life into Vancouver's bland architecture but instead.....

[vansky]

I have realized a long time ago how the city lacks ambition, a chance to add some buildings, and they chose to abandon height, interesting enough.

better than nothing though.

[jlousa]

*l* I've never meant so many people that have no sense of reality in my life. What the heck do we need a supertall for? No Seriously I'd love to know.

Small thinking? Vancouver?? The envy of the world?? It isn't just because of the pretty mountains you know. Almost any city would die to accomplish what Vancouver has, in fact they are trying, or city planners are getting leached by citys that can afford anyone they want yet they choose ours.

The proposal being put forward is anything but unambitious. In fact I'd be surprised if we can pull it off, the amount of engineering need to overcome the obstacles is mind-boggling.
The draft proposal is incredible and if we can pull it off Vancouver will be all the better for it.

[Jared]

Originally Posted by racc

For starters, there is only one additional platform for rail planned. This when high speed rail is looking more and more like a possibility.

If you look at the cross section, one additional platform island is really all they have room for, unless they start buying up some ROW from CP.

Remember, Waterfront is a terminus station, so you effectively have 4 seperate lines meeting there, rather than just two (since you dont need to accomodate trains going both ways at the same time). 3 regional/commuter rail lines, plus 1 for HSR seems pretty reasonable to me. The key is train storage. Either you run all day bi-directional service, or you will have to take over some of the CP marshalling yards to store your trains during the day. Hopefully they leave enough room overhead for a potential electrification at a later point. Especially if they're enclosing it a lot more than it is now.


The other thing about HSR is whether they've made any provisions for a customs facility in their new design. I doubt they have, as at this point, pencilling in the extra platform is about "keeping the options open" rather than any particular plans.

[vansky]

Originally Posted by jlousa

*l* I've never meant so many people that have no sense of reality in my life. What the heck do we need a supertall for? No Seriously I'd love to know.

Small thinking? Vancouver?? The envy of the world?? It isn't just because of the pretty mountains you know. Almost any city would die to accomplish what Vancouver has, in fact they are trying, or city planners are getting leached by citys that can afford anyone they want yet they choose ours.

The proposal being put forward is anything but unambitious. In fact I'd be surprised if we can pull it off, the amount of engineering need to overcome the obstacles is mind-boggling.
The draft proposal is incredible and if we can pull it off Vancouver will be all the better for it.

agree about superheight, but they can still add some height, perhaps line up with the shangri-la. on the other hand, the towers dontl ook interesting enough. hopefully these are office buildings, though i didn't read the details.

every major city in the world has somewhat a superheight built or in their plans, it'd be great if vancouver stays different. i like the idea of putting office towers with condos around skytrain stations.

[Canadian Mind]

Originally Posted by NetMapel

Too ambitious for Vancouver ! Think of all the shadow a supertall will cast :O

Shadow over the water? Big deal.

Originally Posted by jlousa

*l* I've never meant so many people that have no sense of reality in my life. What the heck do we need a supertall for? No Seriously I'd love to know.

Small thinking? Vancouver?? The envy of the world?? It isn't just because of the pretty mountains you know. Almost any city would die to accomplish what Vancouver has, in fact they are trying, or city planners are getting leached by citys that can afford anyone they want yet they choose ours.

The proposal being put forward is anything but unambitious. In fact I'd be surprised if we can pull it off, the amount of engineering need to overcome the obstacles is mind-boggling.
The draft proposal is incredible and if we can pull it off Vancouver will be all the better for it.

In the architectural, planning, and development world it may seem large and ambitious to you guys (as had many of Vancouvers prior accoplishments), but by using us on this site as examples, general uniformed public opinion is that this is small-scale thinking. To win the PR battle you will need to either better educate the public, or by making the project atleast seem bigger. One way to accomplish the second might be to make it a goal that a large amount of space for future expansion is designed into the current project.

Nothing wrong with phased projects, especially in uncertain times like now. Bentall 5 is a beautiful example of this.

Personally I'd liek to see more towers along the waerfront in the 500-600 foot range to expand the skylines feeling of mass when seen from the north. Right now we see what kind of appearance the Big brothers Shaw and Fairmont are doing for views from the northshore, and from being on the water. To me it makes the skyline seem even more cosmopolitan than it already is. Vancouver looks large and dense, but when you get up close and personal, way above it's leauge. But it can go even farther. Every effort should be made to promote larger buildings along the waterfront. Shadows don't really matter over water; no one lives there and if you are a boater that wants sunshine all you have to do is go an extra 100 meters away from shore.

[Spork]

I believe that it was either on this forum or a conversation with an exchange student friend where it was stated that somebody (exchange student, their friend, or somebody's friend from this forum) stated that they thought that the population of Vancouver was greater than Toronto, simply because of the number of high rises.

[Political_R]

It's time to just buy CP's ROW to Mission City since they've been a Berlin Wall to expansion of WCE. Probably WCE could run hourly during the off peak and on weekends as well. However, CP doesn't want to deal with passenger trains on its rails is what I hear.

[David]

Originally Posted by Political_R

It's time to just buy CP's ROW to Mission City since they've been a Berlin Wall to expansion of WCE. Probably WCE could run hourly during the off peak and on weekends as well. However, CP doesn't want to deal with passenger trains on its rails is what I hear.

[jlousa]

That land is listed as federal, neither the city nor the province could expropriate it if the wanted. We're pretty lucky that they are playing as nicely as they are, we need to remember that that port is a necessity for the whole country, it's much bigger then a Vancouver thing. I fully admit my bias on the matter having worked for the the ports.
If you read the details it clearly states that almost the whole development will be commercial space. There is a max potential of 1.5M sqft of which they've imposed a min requirement of 1.1M sqft of commercial. So the only chance of any residential is if they are somehow able to build out to the max and that residential will carry noise covenants like the units next to BC Place. The engineering on that would be on a scale not seen in Vancouver to date.

I'm glad they looked into moving the seaplane terminal over but due to the amount of landings/take offs and the existing boat traffic it wasn't doable, at least it was considered.

Making the building taller would not enable this to be easier sold to the general public, in fact it's going to be hard enough as is, making them taller would practically kill the project. These building also won't have large floorplates, making them any taller would get to the point of diminishing returns. You can get away with 5 elevators for 26 office floors, building a 40 storey tower and you're looking at about 10 elevators, on a floor plate that size once you include the 2 stairwells you've run out of room to do much.

This report was put together by Steer Davis Gleave, probably the biggest name in the business, I trust their work and if this is what they've come up with, that's as good as it could be.

[fever]

Larger buildings along the waterfront could make the skyline less dramatic from the Seabus, like how New York's downtown skyline is boring from the water because a few big blocky buildings hide the more varied buildings, in height, width, and style, behind.

This site is incredibly complicated and important, and this isn't an attempt to design the site. This is the city's attempt at figuring out what it wants on the site, so when the owners decide to develop it they'll be able to come forward with a proposal that will meet the city's expectations. It'll make the process more predictable for the owners, so development can proceed more quickly when the market turns. We can't know what it will look like yet - that's up to the owners, but we can get an idea of the constraints on the site and the possible form of development from this planning process. At least that's my take on it.

[wrenegade]

Originally Posted by jlousa

The proposal being put forward is anything but unambitious. In fact I'd be surprised if we can pull it off, the amount of engineering need to overcome the obstacles is mind-boggling.

Not the just the engineering, but the fact you have 4 different parties who control the land, none of which are the City or Translink. Selling this plan to each and every one of them is going to take gazillions of negotiations.

The draft proposal is incredible and if we can pull it off Vancouver will be all the better for it.

I agree. I just finished reading the whole thing and think it is fantastic. The building heights are definitely decent, and when you add up all the square footage, the engineering challenges, the cost, all the moving parts (Port, Rail, Transit, Office buildings), etc, this will be one of the most ambitious projects ever attempted in city.

I'd like to see the parkade that is currently owned by Kerfoot be allowed to be higher that 26 stories, realistically something in the mid-30s. I would also REALLY like to see the heliport incorporated on the rooftop of the marine terminal. Those two things aside, the plan is fantastic. I hope the character of buildings, especially the land terminal, match the surroundings (CPR Station and Sinclair Centre).

[racc]

Originally Posted by awvan

Not the just the engineering, but the fact you have 4 different parties who control the land, none of which are the City or Translink. Selling this plan to each and every one of them is going to take gazillions of negotiations.

For what. To improve the view on Granville Street for one block while ruining one of the best waterfront squares in the city while wasting tens of millions of dollars in the process. One block on Granville which hardly anyone walks or drives down. It is much nicer to walk on the bridge over Cordova Street.

[vansky]

Originally Posted by Spork

I believe that it was either on this forum or a conversation with an exchange student friend where it was stated that somebody (exchange student, their friend, or somebody's friend from this forum) stated that they thought that the population of Vancouver was greater than Toronto, simply because of the number of high rises.

It is not uncommon to find vancouver as a major city just by visiting its downtown. 10 yrs ago, someone from sydney came, and said to me that vancouver was a farm. 10 years later after visiting downtown, my friend thinks this is a big city.

[Yume-sama]

Vancouver actually does have one of the best downtowns. It creates the feeling of being much bigger than it is.

I love living downtown, I can't say I'd want to in many other cities.

[SpongeG]

at least surrey is forward thinking none of this small town nimby vancouver stuff