900 Albert St | 234/203/105m | 65/56/23fl | Approved

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Ottawacurious

Is it better to build before knowing what will happen at lebreton or afterward? Few more months to go on a decision related to an arena. Waited this long...what's another year to ensure you maximize the site?

If that is what they are waiting for it is probably be 5-10 years before construction starts.

[Harley613]

I mean, they put up their new development at Lansdowne immediately after removing Trinity Centre, so that signifies to me they are likely focusing on that while the O-Train/Lebreton situations get sorted.

[originalmuffins]

This is not an official update!!! Sorry if you thought so, just tried to dig for more information on this.


Last I saw was Fotenn having designs for this. I know BH architects has renderings on their website but CLV has it on their website still:

https://www.clvdevelopments.com/project/900-albert/


These are still up at BH Architect's website:

[Harley613]

We have seen these horrendous CharchWhite renders, but this is the first time I have seen CLV attached to the project. I knew they bought into the bread factory project on Gladstone, but I didn't know they were involved in 'Trinity Centre' if that's what it's still called.

Edit: Ahhh, Interrent is CLV, and CLV is Interrent. I knew they were involved after all.

[J.OT13]

Getting worse every time. Please just sell to a developer who can produce a good design and actually build. These would be a huge embarrassment to our city.

Base don their portfolios, I don't think Trinity or CLV can achieve such a huge project. CLV can't even get their much simpler Gladstone development off the ground. Maybe it's because they are still negotiating with Canada Bank Note, or maybe they just don't have that kind of bandwidth. Maybe they are waiting to finish Trebla.

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Getting worse every time. Please just sell to a developer who can produce a good design and actually build. These would be a huge embarrassment to our city.

Base don their portfolios, I don't think Trinity or CLV can achieve such a huge project. CLV can't even get their much simpler Gladstone development off the ground. Maybe it's because they are still negotiating with Canada Bank Note, or maybe they just don't have that kind of bandwidth. Maybe they are waiting to finish Trebla.

You don't want 50-60 story CharcWhites absolutely dominating the skyline either, eh?

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Harley613

You don't want 50-60 story CharcWhites absolutely dominating the skyline either, eh?

[DTcrawler]

Yeah, time to move on. After five years of anticipation, my patience has run out. At this point I don't even know if I'd be excited to hear they broke-ground considering these renders and the travesty they committed at Rideau/Chapel. Sell this to a developer that knows what they're doing. Trinity is way out of its league. Stick to suburban big-box plazas, Ruddy.

[originalmuffins]

Originally Posted by Harley613

We have seen these horrendous CharchWhite renders, but this is the first time I have seen CLV attached to the project. I knew they bought into the bread factory project on Gladstone, but I didn't know they were involved in 'Trinity Centre' if that's what it's still called.

Edit: Ahhh, Interrent is CLV, and CLV is Interrent. I knew they were involved after all.

Ah so they have been involved since InterREIT bought half? Sorry, thought it was something new.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Getting worse every time. Please just sell to a developer who can produce a good design and actually build. These would be a huge embarrassment to our city.

Base don their portfolios, I don't think Trinity or CLV can achieve such a huge project. CLV can't even get their much simpler Gladstone development off the ground. Maybe it's because they are still negotiating with Canada Bank Note, or maybe they just don't have that kind of bandwidth. Maybe they are waiting to finish Trebla.

It really is. I really hope Trinity sells the development to someone who will just break ground and build it today. It has approvals in place, and they keep slightly downgrading it. It's such a wasted opportunity.

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

Yeah, time to move on. After five years of anticipation, my patience has run out. At this point I don't even know if I'd be excited to hear they broke-ground considering these renders and the travesty they committed at Rideau/Chapel. Sell this to a developer that knows what they're doing. Trinity is way out of its league. Stick to suburban big-box plazas, Ruddy.

I am with you on that one, Trinity needs to take their stupid hands out of it and just sell it to a competent developer from Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver. Sitting on such a prime lot with an approval like that is just a waste of everyone's time. And it doesn't help that this fills a big need of rentals in our market. If only a developer buys from our bigger city comes and takes it over. I don't even think they're competent enough to take on Lansdowne let alone this after that travesty at Rideau+Chapel.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Does trinity have any track record with tall buildings? They appear to be primarily a developer of big box stores. I'm a little skeptical this thing gets built.

Just noting my post from July 2018.

[AuxTown]

It seems this project went really silent once the Sens started seriously looking to Lebreton again. Maybe this parcel of land can be part of the new arena district? Would be one sure fire way to ensure they have an covered (enclosed?) pedestrian walkway from the LRT to the arena.

[originalmuffins]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

It seems this project went really silent once the Sens started seriously looking to Lebreton again. Maybe this parcel of land can be part of the new arena district? Would be one sure fire way to ensure they have an covered (enclosed?) pedestrian walkway from the LRT to the arena.

I think we'd much rather a developer takes this thing on and builds it. The Sens will have their hands full with the arena for the next few years+. Also, we are much better off if the NCC gives up an acre of the Parks District instead since that land is just planned to be a patch of grass.

[Kitchissippi]

I think the pandemic killed this project, and it takes much longer for this city to gain momentum back into an optimistic track. If one was superstitious, the Icon might have been Ottawa’s version of the Skyscraper Curse. all the tall buildings proposed around the same time have stalled.

[zzptichka]

This is the reason why I want Lebreton Flats to be high-density variable-height under-30 floors.

These stupid towers are too big to swallow for these developers, and they just waste everyone's time.

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by zzptichka

This is the reason why I want Lebreton Flats to be high-density variable-height under-30 floors.

These stupid towers are too big to swallow for these developers, and they just waste everyone's time.

What an incredible and pointless waste that would be. The one and only chance to put serious density around our biggest mass transit hub, and the one and only chance to show the rest of the city that density can be tall, beautiful, and doesn't have to bust entire blocks. If Lebreton gets filled out with an extension of the tabletop with typical Ottawa lot-line to lot-line 27 story monolithic brick chunk towers in pairs and in triplicate, I will officially lose my faith in this city's ability to turn itself around and convert into something world class and sustainable.

[zzptichka]

Originally Posted by Harley613

What an incredible and pointless waste that would be. The one and only chance to put serious density around our biggest mass transit hub, and the one and only chance to show the rest of the city that density can be tall, beautiful, and doesn't have to bust entire blocks. If Lebreton gets filled out with an extension of the tabletop with typical Ottawa lot-line to lot-line 27 story monolithic brick chunk towers in pairs and in triplicate, I will officially lose my faith in this city's ability to turn itself around and convert into something world class and sustainable.

What would be a waste is having a developer sit on a brownfield for 10 years showing nice renders, before flipping it to the next one and walking away. Or build a 50-floor charcoal brick garbage because that's the best they could get at these heights to not go bankrupt. Oh wait, that's literally what's happening.

Many here think we live in "SimCity 2000" or something: You just cut some costs, save up resources, drop skyscrapers on an empty land, and boom you have a nice skyline for your discord channel. Easy-peasy.

Well, it doesn't work like that, unfortunately.

[originalmuffins]

Originally Posted by zzptichka

This is the reason why I want Lebreton Flats to be high-density variable-height under-30 floors.

These stupid towers are too big to swallow for these developers, and they just waste everyone's time.

No, what we really need is a city that will not waste time approving high density projects near transit. And we need to entice developers from a bigger city that CAN take this on, and not approve it for people like Trinity who have no idea what their doing. Doing sub 30 floors for Lebreton is an awful idea.

Look at 1040 Richmond, those are developers from out of town and well within a realistic plan near an LRT station yet it was rejected. Meanwhile, our council is up in arms for any decent proposal with height except for three: Icon (it looked better in the renders), Trinity Towers, and The Sky. Everything else was pushed to be lower, including the beautiful towers on Albert. They were planned for 38 floors and 30, but now dropped to 33 and 28. Or the fact the Dream Towers, which are great designed, still hasn't been approved by city even though it doesn't need to be due to NCC bypass, but NCC wants to play nice and wait for them.

That's where the real waste of time is, and the solution isn't building stumps. Calgary and Edmonton are similarly sized, yet have much more massive towers.

Originally Posted by Harley613

What an incredible and pointless waste that would be. The one and only chance to put serious density around our biggest mass transit hub, and the one and only chance to show the rest of the city that density can be tall, beautiful, and doesn't have to bust entire blocks. If Lebreton gets filled out with an extension of the tabletop with typical Ottawa lot-line to lot-line 27 story monolithic brick chunk towers in pairs and in triplicate, I will officially lose my faith in this city's ability to turn itself around and convert into something world class and sustainable.

Agreed.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

It seems this project went really silent once the Sens started seriously looking to Lebreton again. Maybe this parcel of land can be part of the new arena district? Would be one sure fire way to ensure they have an covered (enclosed?) pedestrian walkway from the LRT to the arena.

Sad that the original LeBreton Arena deal was killed because of this project. Five years later, the arena would be near completion while this one still hasn't broken ground.

That said, based on the last five years, I doubt Trinity would have been able to pull off LeBreton anyway.

Originally Posted by zzptichka

This is the reason why I want Lebreton Flats to be high-density variable-height under-30 floors.

These stupid towers are too big to swallow for these developers, and they just waste everyone's time.

That would be a reasonable conclusion if we were unaware of what was happening in cities outside of Ottawa, but the fact that a cheaper market like Montreal, more expensive markets like Toronto and Vancouver (+ suburbs) and markets similar markets to our like Edmonton and Calgary are all building towers that are taller and better designed than Ottawa tells us that it's a local developer problem, not an Ottawa problem. Dream, M+M, Jadco and other developers from outside of Ottawa are slowly showing us that it is possible to build tall and well designed towers.

Originally Posted by originalmuffins

No, what we really need is a city that will not waste time approving high density projects near transit. And we need to entice developers from a bigger city that CAN take this on, and not approve it for people like Trinity who have no idea what their doing. Doing sub 30 floors for Lebreton is an awful idea.

Look at 1040 Richmond, those are developers from out of town and well within a realistic plan near an LRT station yet it was rejected. Meanwhile, our council is up in arms for any decent proposal with height except for three: Icon (it looked better in the renders), Trinity Towers, and The Sky. Everything else was pushed to be lower, including the beautiful towers on Albert. They were planned for 38 floors and 30, but now dropped to 33 and 28. Or the fact the Dream Towers, which are great designed, still hasn't been approved by city even though it doesn't need to be due to NCC bypass, but NCC wants to play nice and wait for them.

That's where the real waste of time is, and the solution isn't building stumps. Calgary and Edmonton are similarly sized, yet have much more massive towers.

Mastercraft Starwood is another out of town developer who were rejected for extra height several times (project on O'Connor and the first proposal for SoHo Italia, with Icon being approved across the street and the City giving Claridge more height, unsolicited). To me, it seems like local developers who make contributions to local politicians get special treatment.

[originalmuffins]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Sad that the original LeBreton Arena deal was killed because of this project. Five years later, the arena would be near completion while this one still hasn't broken ground.

That said, based on the last five years, I doubt Trinity would have been able to pull off LeBreton anyway.

That would be a reasonable conclusion if we were unaware of what was happening in cities outside of Ottawa, but the fact that a cheaper market like Montreal, more expensive markets like Toronto and Vancouver (+ suburbs) and markets similar markets to our like Edmonton and Calgary are all building towers that are taller and better designed than Ottawa tells us that it's a local developer problem, not an Ottawa problem. Dream, M+M, Jadco and other developers from outside of Ottawa are slowly showing us that it is possible to build tall and well designed towers.

Mastercraft Starwood is another out of town developer who were rejected for extra height several times (project on O'Connor and the first proposal for SoHo Italia, with Icon being approved across the street and the City giving Claridge more height, unsolicited). To me, it seems like local developers who make contributions to local politicians get special treatment.

Exactly this. SoHo Italia is a much more beautifully built building. If this was the 45 floor one and not the Icon, we'd have a very nice Ottawa tallest for the time being.

So this is the real reason why we have these giant skyscrapers sitting there doing nothing, we have only been approving them for local developers who can't or don't have much experience to pull it off. So they sit on these lots doing nothing. I'd much rather our local developers get the approvals, then just sell the lots to another developer. If both lots (900 Albert and The Sky) were sold today to a bigger development, we'd see them both break ground within a year. The bias is real, and frankly annoying.

We may have been blessed for Rendezvous to fall out, because Trinity has not been able to do anything substantial since then and under delivered on the ones they did try to deliver on.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by originalmuffins

Exactly this. SoHo Italia is a much more beautifully built building. If this was the 45 floor one and not the Icon, we'd have a very nice Ottawa tallest for the time being.

So this is the real reason why we have these giant skyscrapers sitting there doing nothing, we have only been approving them for local developers who can't or don't have much experience to pull it off. So they sit on these lots doing nothing. I'd much rather our local developers get the approvals, then just sell the lots to another developer. If both lots (900 Albert and The Sky) were sold today to a bigger development, we'd see them both break ground within a year. The bias is real, and frankly annoying.

We may have been blessed for Rendezvous to fall out, because Trinity has not been able to do anything substantial since then and under delivered on the ones they did try to deliver on.

Have any big developers of 60+ story buildings showed any interest in Ottawa?

I think a lot of developers ask for more height than they actually want as a negotiating position.