Saskatoon | Baydo Towers | ??m - ??m | 25-25 Floors | U/C

[905er]

Originally Posted by phone

It will be shite. There is no question. But at least it will bring a booster shot of added population downtown. Whether that's worth the cost is a matter of opinion.

agreed... but i've seen older subsidized housing projects that look nicer than this. Baydo makes crap.
It's ok... we'll all just look towards River Landing. I would have thought River Landing and Escala would have upped the ante design wise for the city.
At least we can keep our fingers crossed for that knox church development by Meridian. That one looks aesthetically speaking very promising.

[roryn1]

Originally Posted by 905er

agreed... but i've seen older subsidized housing projects that look nicer than this. Baydo makes crap.
It's ok... we'll all just look towards River Landing. I would have thought River Landing and Escala would have upped the ante design wise for the city.
At least we can keep our fingers crossed for that knox church development by Meridian. That one looks aesthetically speaking very promising.

I’ll personally never look towards river landing as it’s psf price is out of the price range of 98% of Canadian residents.

Go Baydo bring legit people downtown with a tower that’s more beautiful than all of its fairly ugly neighbouring towers!

[905er]

Originally Posted by roryn1

I’ll personally never look towards river landing as it’s psf price is out of the price range of 98% of Canadian residents.

Go Baydo bring legit people downtown with a tower that’s more beautiful than all of its fairly ugly neighbouring towers!

someone once posted a picture of Baydo with larger windows and it made a world of difference. the current proposal with it's teeny tiny windows looks amateurish at best. these towers look only marginally better than their ugly neighbours. I hate that 'affordable' has to be followed by poor design. There's no excuse and Canadian cities deserve better. I really hope the end result looks better than the drawings but I won't hold my breath.

[Crisis]

Originally Posted by 905er

someone once posted a picture of Baydo with larger windows and it made a world of difference. the current proposal with it's teeny tiny windows looks amateurish at best. these towers look only marginally better than their ugly neighbours. I hate that 'affordable' has to be followed by poor design. There's no excuse and Canadian cities deserve better. I really hope the end result looks better than the drawings but I won't hold my breath.

Unfortunately, there is a direct correlation between "better design" and affordability. For example, bigger windows cost more money and require a more robust HVAC system. EIFS is the most cost effective decently performing exterior finish for a building like this. Quality costs money and has an impact on the rental pricing.

I'm no fan of Baydo, but they are filling a need in the market, even though we may not like how they are doing it.

[roryn1]

I like my condo next door to this Baydo project, but those Baydo windows AND balconies are TWICE the size of mine and rent will be the exact same. Plus they’re using a higher quality exterior material than the stucko on my building.
How are people here this picky when not even a doctor can afford No1 River Landing.
PLUS they have so many features that my building doesn’t have. This is a huge increase in quality for 25th and 5th - the most dense neighborhood in saskatoon

If I didn’t own I’d move in in a second. My building is falling apart with zero plans by the board to do anything about it.

[ToonTownRob]

The new renderings show dramatic differences than the original, which did Baydo no favors with its gray colors against a dark gray sky - could you possibly present more doom and gloom? But experienced people understand that a rendering is simply an artistic impression of how something will look. The final result can go either way... a lot. That’s just the nature of the game.

So bored with all these armchair quarterbacks bleating the same silly comments over and over. I’ve been away for three months cause I could barely stand it.

If you can do better, take your millions and do it!

Otherwise, shut up about it. You’ve stated your opinion... okay, we get it, we’ve heard what you have to say, now move on.

The city would sell any land for more money if they could get it. But there just aren’t developers lined up down the block hungry to start builds here are there?

Even high point ran for the hills!

If I was a Baydo owner/exec, based on much of this thread, I would be highly tempted to tell this city to go &$#@#*& itself, take my Chinese bankroll and go build somewhere else!

Thank goodness they have more sense than many on this thread, or it could be another 40 years before anything that you can see from more than three blocks away gets built in our downtown north end.

And by the way, the ground here is only frozen at most three feet down over the winter. Below that (at least as far as surface construction is concerned) its a stable 3-4 degrees C all the way down, and all year long. It’s called frost ripping cause you only have to rip the surface off to get to real digging immediately.

How do you think house basements get done all year long?

Such simple building knowledge, but it shows the level of expertise of many on this forum. That isn’t meant to be an attack on any particular individuals. To me everyone is welcome, and there is nothing wrong with ignorance if one is ready and willing to learn.

Sorry. I’m not some blind fan boy who thinks all development is great just for its own sake, nor am I a nimby hater, or arrogant snob who thinks I’m the only judge of good design. But perhaps we can have a bitch and moan thread where people can go to post the same old tired off balance attacks and complaints, over and over again, and those who enjoy and admire building and development, good and bad, can enjoy balanced discussion about it?

I guess I should go crawl back under my (frozen) rock now.

It is simply my hope that these discussions, while open to dissent, criticism and disapproval, can overall celebrate building and development, rather than denigrate it and those who do it. Thanks and Cheers!

[Ricopedra]

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[alt_center]

Originally Posted by ToonTownRob

If you can do better, take your millions and do it!

Otherwise, shut up about it.

I was hoping to find on this board other architecture and built-environment enthusiasts with whom I could debate opinions and ideas. My favourite part of these discussions is people's ideas about how to improve things. After all mediocrity breeds mediocrity.

But people like you ruin it. Over and out forever.

[phone]

Once upon a time the people of the village lived in harmony. Then a company called Baydo started densifying downtown Saskatoon in the ugliest way they could imagine. Construction people and design people started stomping their feet and some feelings got hurt in the process. One side said nobody is doing anything better, the other said we shouldn't accept mediocrity. This might be crazy, but what if we could debate the merits of urban design, acknowledge environmental considerations, grant that a lot of people really don't like butt ugly buildings, learn from each other, and come to new opinions somewhere in the middle? Is that so impossible? Or are we really just a bunch of King Ralphs in denial? I dont have the highest post count here but I've been a regular member of the peanut gallery for long enough and the BS thats going on now is worse than ever. I'll admit that I have stirred the pot once or twice (maybe this makes thrice now) but I would hope that we could be able to handle disagreement, even heated disagreement, without getting all petulant and cross. Its a gosh darn apartment building, not the frickin Downtown Arena, Central Library, or Modern Art Gallery! Can't we get a grip, whether we think this project is good or bad (it has some combination of both, where that balance lies is up to you) we should hopefully be able to act like adults and let things that might rankle us slide every now and then.

[YXE]

If an anonymous online forum is causing you any level of stress whatsoever, or the need to rant about types of questions asked in said forum, you have some other issues that I hope can be taken care of professionally.

[roryn1]

I find this banter all a mildly hilarious joke to my life since Baydo’s project is like five times nicer in every way than my 1960’s condo next door. Quit making fun of my life!

Some concrete was poured Friday, pretty slow activity since then

[The Bess]

Thanks for the pic roryn1, yes it is going slow wonder if they are waiting for Broadway to finish. Seems like alot of dirt still in the way. I still remember as a kid those highrises you live in being built. In fact my dad worked on one of them. It was pretty exciting back then to see these buildings rise, even though today they are not so exciting.

[Crisis]

Thanks for the continuing updates, roryn.
Very interesting photo above. I don’t recall ever recall seeing a shored excavation quite like that. Normally, the perimeter shoring goes full depth, usually tied back into the surrounding soil. You’ll occasionally see some interior bracing (normally just at the corners) but to see these angle braces to the footings for the building core is very odd. I’d heard some rumours about soil stability within the excavation and shoring installation refusal due to boulders. This photo would tend to lend credence to those rumours.

Also curious to see if the core being cast right now is just for the north tower, with a second one to being constructed for the south tower? Tough to tell for sure given the angle of the photo.

[roryn1]

I can confirm that they were having boulder issues. I am so happy that piling is done. Our building was shaking all summer last year, working from home.

Either way, I’m excited for a crane for a neighbour soon since Saskatoon shouldn’t have zero cranes on our skyline ever again . I hope this build produces the $950/month rent they're promising - that’s half of what No1River Landing can offer and $950/month is still expensive.. If they can get there, I expect we could see a second Baydo tower on another surface lot downtown or even the new River Landing Parcels. Let’s get some builds rolling!

[Ricopedra]

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[Roquentin]

It sounds like the towers will have a swimming pool.

https://www.reddit.com/r/saskatoon/c...buried_at_new/

[roryn1]

eek I feel bad for the folks living that close to this construction the next two years only to lose a huge portion of their view.

The foundation is now fully covered in dirt…

[roryn1]

Originally Posted by roryn1

eek I feel bad for the folks living that close to this construction the next two years only to lose a huge portion of their view.

The foundation is now fully covered in dirt…

From Reddit:
Apparently it’s a new modern way of building - they are sinking it and the dirt is coming up around it. An engineering plan to make a foundation deeper than your building; originally used in Denmark and just approved by engineers to be used in Canada in 2020.

Simple physics really, with that big of a piece of concrete floating on blue clay compensates for any shifting the building may encounter due to external forces.

You see the steel beams attached to it, they will attach to the fulcrum system that will tie in to the counterweight of the elevator once the building is in place, making it a higher quality tower than No1 River Landing.

[Crisis]

That explanation from Reddit sounds to me like someone just having some fun at the expense of others. Time will tell, but most of the Reddit discussion sounds ludicrous.

[roryn1]

Originally Posted by Crisis

That explanation from Reddit sounds to me like someone just having some fun at the expense of others. Time will tell, but most of the Reddit discussion sounds ludicrous.

It seemed very planned as it wasn’t sinking the day before and they had an insane amount of levels all over it today prior to burying it - there’s now a machine that looks like it would be pushing it down further. I believe it https://www.realclearscience.com/art...nk_110484.html