Northern Ontario developments!

[TbayON]

A proposal by Nordmin Engineering to use the former Sir John A MacDonald school as a technical office will go before council tonight. It seems like a very odd location for an engineering office to me, but then again engineers do think different than the rest of us normal people. Over 100 people would work at the office. I think city administration is recommending council reject the proposal if I remember correctly.

The use of Sir John A. for a residential development faced stiff opposition from area residents about a year ago and the developer ultimately dropped that proposal. Much fewer concerns have been brought forth so far with this proposal, and is pretty well limited to someone not wanting cell towers on the property.

[vid]

Having 100 people work at that location simply isn't practical. Sir John A. MacDonald school is too far from an arterial road and in the middle of a residential area, and not served at all by transit. (That is one of the few parts of the city located more than 400m from a bus route.) It simply isn't a practical location for a major employer. The only plus that site has for locating a school there was the underground access to County Park, otherwise it wouldn't have been a practical neighbourhood for a school, either. When you consider that the highway is effectively a barrier, that location is the edge of a residential neighbourhood.

I can however appreciate how difficult it is to find that kind of space in this city. We have too many little vacant office spaces to be able to bring rates up to where they need to be to stimulate office development, so nothing new gets built even though it is needed. Every proposal like this just brings us closer to new office developments though, hopefully we see something decent go up downtown. Maybe phase two of Arthur Place?

I honestly can't think of a similarly sized vacant building that would be move-in ready with little work. Maybe one of the Kam River warehouses, but the one on Montreal is probably mostly leased for storage and the old Harvester International building is hard to get to.


Just took a look at the Vue on the Water website; the south tower is apparently called Allure and the north one is called Aurora.

[vid]

Quite a bit of development stuff in tonight's council meeting:

TBayTel is building a new engineering building on one of the lots at Tungsten and Jasper, which were cleared recently.

The Nordmin proposal for Sir John A. school is apparently popular with residents who didn't want 40 houses but are OK with 100 cars coming and going simultaneously twice a day. One woman is quite excited about how the building will be empty at night and on weekends.

A four unit building proposed for Woodward (James) and Frederica

A 24 unit apartment and 18 townhouses for a long lot on Dawson Road at the end of Skyline Avenue.

[ccnews]

Originally Posted by vid

Quite a bit of development stuff in tonight's council meeting:


A four unit building proposed for Woodward (James) and Frederica

that building has been empty for quite some time, would be nice to see both buildings removed and built new - one building fronts Gore Street, the other fronts the laneway - the one fronting the laneway is the one that I believe Vid is talking about

http://goo.gl/maps/EHxfQ

[TbayON]

Originally Posted by vid

Having 100 people work at that location simply isn't practical. Sir John A. MacDonald school is too far from an arterial road and in the middle of a residential area, and not served at all by transit. (That is one of the few parts of the city located more than 400m from a bus route.) It simply isn't a practical location for a major employer. The only plus that site has for locating a school there was the underground access to County Park, otherwise it wouldn't have been a practical neighbourhood for a school, either. When you consider that the highway is effectively a barrier, that location is the edge of a residential neighbourhood.

Its 100 right now, but with all the mining activity in the region, I would bet that number will grow quite substantially. Even more perplexing is that the citizens in the area who tore a strip out of the developer who wanted to put housing in the area are very happy about this proposal. Its just crazy all around.

Originally Posted by vid

I honestly can't think of a similarly sized vacant building that would be move-in ready with little work. Maybe one of the Kam River warehouses, but the one on Montreal is probably mostly leased for storage and the old Harvester International building is hard to get to.

I was in that Kam River warehouse a couple years ago, and it was pretty well empty. Its another Habib property though, and he doesn't have the cash to do much with it. He was planning condos and restaurants at the time to get away from having it as a storage building, I doubt that will be happening any time soon though.

Originally Posted by vid

Quite a bit of development stuff in tonight's council meeting:

TBayTel is building a new engineering building on one of the lots at Tungsten and Jasper, which were cleared recently.

The Nordmin proposal for Sir John A. school is apparently popular with residents who didn't want 40 houses but are OK with 100 cars coming and going simultaneously twice a day. One woman is quite excited about how the building will be empty at night and on weekends.

A four unit building proposed for Woodward (James) and Frederica

A 24 unit apartment and 18 townhouses for a long lot on Dawson Road at the end of Skyline Avenue.

An engineering firm was at the TBayTel site the other day, so I would assume that will be happening pretty soon. Its too bad TBayTel wouldn't have gone into a core area somewhere, they quite the compound over there now. I guess they need space for a yard though for all their vehicles and equipment, and it wouldn't work out too well.

How can a 24 unit apartment building and townhouses go on Dawson? Isn't the danger from transport trucks too high to develop there? Good to hear that some more higher density residential is on the way!

[vid]

The Dawson condo/townhouse proposal is actually along a new private street heading northeast of Dawson. The condo building will shield the townhouses behind it from the existence of a highway.

The city should force all of the people moving into properties along Dawson Road to sign an affidavit acknowledging that Dawson Road has a lot of truck traffic and they're willing to accept the risks of living on such a road.

Or they should pressure the MTO to stick a weight station on it at the end of Government Road and man it 24/7 with really nitpicky inspectors.


If TBayTel went downtown, they would be too restricted by the lack of space to expand into. They have a lot of stuff that needs a simple warehouse environment and Lithium is the best place for that. They could move their offices into a downtown core and stick administrative and customer service personnel there, but they form just a small part of TBayTel's workforce, which only has 400 total in the first place. They could probably fit comfortably in the Whalen Building's free space. But then why separate them from all the other TBayTel stuff at Lithium? It would be nice if they had a nicer campus but it is mostly just boring buildings full of computer equipment.

The Sir John A School thing is just Thunder Bayers being Thunder Bayers. This city is so 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 weird sometimes. If everyone in the area is agreeing that it is what they want then we might as well let them have it. Who knows, a trend of having large employers locate into surplus school buildings could be a good thing. Thunder Bay Centre of Change is working out well, Wequedong Lodge has taken over that old high school on Balsam that was previously Adult Ed, and a few are now condos or being turned into them. All of this is better than what they could have been: vacant eyesores surrounded by litter. I actually can't think of any unused school buildings at this point?

[TbayON]

Originally Posted by vid

The Sir John A School thing is just Thunder Bayers being Thunder Bayers. This city is so 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 weird sometimes. If everyone in the area is agreeing that it is what they want then we might as well let them have it. Who knows, a trend of having large employers locate into surplus school buildings could be a good thing. Thunder Bay Centre of Change is working out well, Wequedong Lodge has taken over that old high school on Balsam that was previously Adult Ed, and a few are now condos or being turned into them. All of this is better than what they could have been: vacant eyesores surrounded by litter. I actually can't think of any unused school buildings at this point?

Those older schools were put up in the days when they still built 🞵🞵🞵🞵, so even though they are no longer useful as schools, they are solid buildings with years of life left to serve another purpose. No unused schools come to mind for myself either, unless you want to consider FWCI unused because Habib has not gotten it retrofitted for occupancy just yet.

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The groundbreaking for the new professional building occurred today at the hospital. It will have an Oliver Rd address. The TBRHSC is considering putting the cyclotron in the building, but hasn't yet decided if they will.

I noticed some earth was being moved and some stakes have been driven in the ground by the Chain Saw Centre just off Cumberland. I'm not sure what the job is about, but it looks as though something may be going up there.

[tjernobyl]

Does anyone know when Sir John A. was built? I'm trying to make sense of its location. It would almost certainly predate the Expressway; I wonder if there was an arterial connection that no longer exists, or if one had been planned.

Habib wants to convert the old Patternick's on Victoria to 21 units of affordable housing, but as a requirement of the grant he's going for, he needs Council to authorize a tax break.

[vid]

Originally Posted by tjernobyl

Does anyone know when Sir John A. was built? I'm trying to make sense of its location. It would almost certainly predate the Expressway; I wonder if there was an arterial connection that no longer exists, or if one had been planned.

Sir John A. MacDonald school was built in 1969, which I think is right around the time the expressway was built. I am pretty sure the underpass connecting it to County Park was part of the whole development, but all the kids I knew from County Park always went to Balsam School until the Catholic school was built in the 1990s.

You can kind of connect the dots with Castlegreen/Bloor/Crescent/Margaret and see what might have been an arterial if things had gone differently but I don't think one was ever planned. Bloor Street was probably supposed to just be a regular street in a subdivision that never really took hold. It does, however, line up with an unopened road allowance that crosses Superiorview Drive in Castlegreen, and meets up with an "unnamed road" in the large area north of Wardrope with a surveyed grid of estate lots.

Strand and Dublin line up with Wentworth Crescent (and Regina with County Park Boulevard), but I don't know if they were ever connected or if they simply kept the original survey lines when they developed those streets in the 1970s.

Originally Posted by tjernobyl

Habib wants to convert the old Patternick's on Victoria to 21 units of affordable housing, but as a requirement of the grant he's going for, he needs Council to authorize a tax break.

Really hope this goes through. That building needs to be used for something.

[TbayON]

Originally Posted by tjernobyl

Habib wants to convert the old Patternick's on Victoria to 21 units of affordable housing, but as a requirement of the grant he's going for, he needs Council to authorize a tax break.

Which building is that again or where about is it on Victoria? My memory is not serving me well at this point.

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Haven't seen it mentioned here, so I will bring it up: The Lyceum Theatre building in downtown P.A. is finally getting some widespread public attention. The Heritage Advisory committee is worried about the state of the building, and the fact that it is not being used currently. It sounds like they are seriously looking into designating the building as a historical structure, but that will likely take 2 years. The building is currently in tax arrears.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/story/2012/10/24/tby-lyceum-concerns.html

Supposedly the Spence Clinic is going to be moving over from Arthur St. to the new 5 storey Tom Jones is about to build at the hospital. I wonder how many more clinics are going to make their way down to the hospital. I guess its really convenient for the doctors.

The former Country Good Meats store at Arthur and Mountdale is becoming another Asian restaurant.

Fill is being hauled into the new Taranis subdivision on Mountain Road near the Fort William Country Club.

Planned location for the 4 storey 24 unit apartment building and 18 townhouses on Dawson Rd discussed at the most recent council meeting:

[vid]

Patternicks, also known as the Roy Block. This was Fort William's Zellers for a long time.

[TbayON]

Five Forks is expanding at Campus Hill and taking over an adjacent unit in their building. I think something is also moving in between Five Forks and the Credit Union. Contractors have been on site for a while now.

Construction is beginning on new commercial space next to the Hortons on Waterloo to the north of Victoria Ave. Rumours have the Secondary School teachers union and a Subway moving in there at the moment.

[TbayON]

Work has already commenced on converting the former Sir John A MacDonald school. A local contractor has been hired by Nordmin Engineering to do the job. It sounds like its a pretty big job, which isn't surprised given the school is a bit rundown cosmetically after years of sitting idle.

Bruno's Contracting has began the ground work on the new TbayTel engineering building on Tungsten. This means Tom Jones will more than likely putting up the building. I have no idea the size of the building, not sure if anyone else knows?

It looks as though the first building at Terra Vista is almost all framed up. I saw an ad today advertising occupancy for 2013 for the townhouses and condos, but I can't remember the specific time.

[tjernobyl]

Originally Posted by TbayON

Bruno's Contracting has began the ground work on the new TbayTel engineering building on Tungsten. This means Tom Jones will more than likely putting up the building. I have no idea the size of the building, not sure if anyone else knows?

One story, 932 square meters. Long rectangle, with the short axis along Tungsten. Built by Pro-Jones Investments, and leased to Tbaytel.

There's an open house for the replacement of the Trowbridge pedestrian bridge on November 5th. 3 meters wide, pre-engineered steel trusses. Downstream to reduce theft from the campground, wide enough to allow emergency vehicles to cross. This is the smallest project I've ever seen an open house for; it speaks to the City's increasing desire to communicate with the public.

[TbayON]

The plan to convert the Thunder Bay Generating Station to natural gas has been put off once again. Apparently the Ontario Power Authority and OPG could not come to a purchase price agreement for the power, at least that is what we are being told. Union Gas had already started the process of public consultation and getting the pipeline into the ground to the station, so they will be seeking in the area of $5 million in compensation from OPG (and therefore the taxpayer in the end) for cancellation of the contract.

NOMA and the city are obviously pissed right off about this. They have already demanded meetings and put a report together about the upcoming energy needs in NWO due to the impending mining boom. The Minister of Energy is to meet with them soon. This cancellation follows the cancellation of two plants in southern Ontario around the time of the demise of McGuinty as premier. I'm not sure what the hell is going on here, but I think it definitely is a much larger issue than purchase price of power. One thing is for certain, this situation illustrates the absolutely insane level of dysfunction at Ontario's electrical authorities.

What this means for the local plant, no one publically knows at this point. The mayor is certain if the plant is not converted, it will be closed as the province has promised to end the use of coal. City officials claim the province says power can be purchased from Manitoba or Minnesota and the lonnnnnggg proposed east-west tie line (they have been dreaming about this since the '70s) can be our power savior. This, of course, is simply not true, but that is another long story.

[TbayON]

Building permit values for this year up until the end of September 2012 for the City of Thunder Bay:



This year is way ahead of last year's $127 589 000 and better than 2010's $151 300 000. In fact, this year's figure is higher than any number back to 1990, without adjusting to inflation. The only year that comes close is 2002 when permits were valued at $173 200 000, thanks mostly in part to the hospital. With roughly a quarter of the year still yet to be reported for, the 2012 numbers still have some growing to do yet.

[vid]

Transit is releasing new maps and pocket schedules, has tweaked a few routes and changed evening bus frequencies to improve interlining at the terminals.

Links to things at cptdb: http://www.cptdb.ca/index.php?showtopic=2206&st=1560

[TbayON]

Sounds like the building next to ToysRUs with more retail space is a go now. It was announced when news of ToysRUs' arrival hit as a phase 2 of sorts and is the second part of that little development that will pretty well finish off the Thunder Centre. The money is in place, we just have to wait for ground to be broken now.

[ccnews]

Originally Posted by TbayON

Sounds like the building next to ToysRUs with more retail space is a go now. It was announced when news of ToysRUs' arrival hit as a phase 2 of sorts and is the second part of that little development that will pretty well finish off the Thunder Centre. The money is in place, we just have to wait for ground to be broken now.

I heard it is going to be a Halloween City store
party decorations, accessories, props and supplies for every occasion

[TbayON]

Originally Posted by ccnews

I heard it is going to be a Halloween City store
party decorations, accessories, props and supplies for every occasion

Aren't they already in Intercity Mall? Or are they going to be moving over to the Thunder Centre once that place is built and the mall is only a temporary location?

Old TD Bank at the corner of Memorial and the Harbour is coming down today. I'm not sure if it is going to be just paved over or if something new is going to be developed there. A sign leasing some commercial space went up quite a while back between the old bank and Hortons next door.