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Posted Jul 25, 2014, 4:01 PM
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BANNED
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Lower Mount Royal, Calgary
Posts: 5,147
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Lots of talk, no walk. Hopefully Bosa gets going on their MRV project. Very little condo supply left in the Beltline that isn't already accounted for. Almost all the upcoming batch will be rental.
Quote:
Apple trees complement 31-storey downtown residential towers
BY CLAIRE YOUNG, CALGARY HERALD JULY 24, 2014
STORYPHOTOS ( 1 )
Apple trees complement 31-storey downtown residential towers
Lamb Development Corp. An artist’s rendering of The Orchard. The two towers in the development are linked by an apple-producing orchard..
Toronto-based condo developer Brad J. Lamb is looking to seed Calgary’s downtown with a new crop of residential towers and harvest a new concept in urban living.
Germane to the plan is a 66-tree apple orchard featuring two varieties, flanked by a pair of slender towers anchoring the east and west corners of this 1.5-acre (0.6-hectare) property in Victoria Park.
The Orchard will offer about 440 to 450 apartments in a pair of 31-storey towers set on a piece of property overlooking the Elbow River. Nestled between the east and west towers will be the south-facing orchard, to be tended by a professional team.
The Orchard reflects core concepts of environmental responsibility, functional public space and a beautiful development, says Lamb, CEO of Lamb Development Corp.
“We wanted this to be a sustainable, local food source to prove that it could be in a city,” says Lamb. “What if every house in Canada grew an apple tree in their backyard? What would that do for the requirements of trucking or freighting apples in from the States or Chile or Japan or wherever we get our apples. There’s a huge cost to the environment for that. If we’re going to have parks, and every city has parks, why don’t we dedicate a certain amount of these parks to fruit and then have markets where the city can sell the fruit?”
Piquing Lamb’s interest in urban agriculture is the case of Detroit, where he has been buying distressed industrial property. Detroit’s population has shrunk from 1.8 million in 1950 to around 700,000 today. Vast swaths of the city are simply abandoned, and there is now a movement to turn this fallow land into arable land.
“I thought, that doesn’t have to happen only in failed cities — that could happen in any city. This was my first opportunity to do it because it’s such a large property,” Lamb says.
The Orchard is the second project in Calgary by Lamb Development Corp., with the first being 6th and Tenth in the Beltline.
Lamb Development Corp. was able to gain more density in the towers through Calgary’s building rules, which reward building public realm into plans.
“Everything you do beyond the basic city building, they’ll reward you with extra density,” Lamb says. “We wanted an extra 45,000 square feet of total density on the site to achieve 31-storey buildings, so we merged all the ideas collectively. This is what development has to be — it has to win for the buyers of the units, for the city, for the citizens and for the developer.”
The towers, in turn, are tall and slender, with small floor plates for better unit layouts and more distance between the buildings to provide for better views. Instead of a concrete piazza between the buildings, Lamb came up with the orchard idea.
“I thought let’s do something environmentally sensitive — trees eat carbon dioxide, they breathe oxygen, they eat pollutants of every kind,” he says. “They make cities cooler, through shade and other means. And they are beautiful to look at, from above and at grade.”
The buildings will have balconies walled with fritted glass, a translucent material which gives privacy to the balconies without impeding the view from the homes, while also shielding what people have on their balconies from below. Designed to flow uninterrupted, they resemble ribbons wrapping around each floor, Lamb says.
“The towers are the statement, that’s the bold statement. The orchard isn’t secondary, but it’s a complement to these beautiful, bold Mies van der Rohe- influenced towers. The fritted balconies hide things on the balconies, and they also provide a sheath, another layer of glass. The balcony glass is more beautiful than building glass,” he says.
One-bedroom units start at $249,900, with about 550 square feet. There will also be one-bedroom and dens, junior two-bedroooms, two bedrooms, penthouse floors and a sky penthouse.
“There is one spectacular sky penthouse that is beyond belief. Phenomenal. With a huge terrace and amazing views. On the next five floors, we have only four suites per floor. They are all penthouse-style units with square footage ranging from 1,100 square feet to 1,700 square feet.”
On the lower levels, the suites range from 550 square feet to 1,000 square feet. There will be a little bit less than one parking stall per unit.
The Orchard sales office is being built on site, with plans to open in September or October.
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http://www.calgaryherald.com/homes/Apple...n+residential+towers/10059903/story.html
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