The Emmy [81 Slater St] | 79m | 25f | U/C

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by OTSkyline

This one, Claridge Moon, Rideau + Chapel all look the same. Basically same height, design, materials...

It's a race for the bottom in this city

[Urbanarchit]

It's sad that this is what we get, meanwhile Toronto has this building at 8 Gloucester proposed and the people there don't like it because it's not beautiful... That building is better than a lot of we get here.

[Arcologist]

Originally Posted by Urbanarchit

It's sad that this is what we get, meanwhile Toronto has this building at 8 Gloucester proposed and the people there don't like it because it's not beautiful... That building is better than a lot of we get here.

Sweet Jesus! That thing would pass as an architectural marvel in Ottawa!

[McKellarDweller]

Originally Posted by Harley613

It's a race for the bottom in this city

Hard to do otherwise when almost every middle class couple in Ottawa making their paycheques in the urban area wants a house and two cars out in the sprawlburbs.

[Marshsparrow]

The mayor, council, bureaucrats, everybody that is involved in design in this city needs to be educated, informed or thrown out - what garbage.

[J.OT13]

Montreal developer proposes 25-storey mixed-use building in downtown Ottawa

David Sali
May 9, 2019
OBJ


A Montreal developer is proposing a new highrise apartment complex in the heart of Ottawa’s burgeoning downtown “urban tech” district.

Place Dor​ée Real Estate Holdings says in a site plan filed recently with the city it plans to build a 25-storey mixed-use tower at 81 Slater St. that would include 196 rental units and about 830 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

A two-storey parking garage and restaurant currently occupy the property and would be demolished to make way for the new building. The site is directly south of the Capital Hill Hotel and Suites at 88 Albert St., which Place Dor​ée purchased last summer from Beacon Realty.

The plan calls for parking for 105 bicycles, but includes just 18 spots for cars ​– all of them reserved for visitors.

In planning documents, the developers note that the property is less than 200 metres from the new Parliament LRT station that is slated to open this year and is located near major bus corridors on Elgin and Bank streets. In addition, the proposed residential tower would be just a few blocks’ walk to several federal government departments as well as major tech employers such as Shopify, Klipfolio and Telesat.

“​Given the property’s location within the central area of the city, with excellent access to alternative transportation modes, parking spaces are required only for residential visitor purposes,” the development application says.

Place Dor​ée says the structure will be integrated into the existing 12-storey hotel on Albert Street, which will remain open. Apartments on the first 12 floors of the new building will be targeted at short-term tenants, the developer added.

The developers say the proposal conforms with current zoning and official plan requirements. Pending city approval, the builder says it hopes to start construction on the project early next year.

According to the most recent statistics from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the rental vacancy rate in the downtown core was just 1.4 per cent in October 2018, below the city’s overall average of 1.6 per cent.

https://obj.ca/article/montreal-developer-proposes-25-storey-mixed-use-building-downtown-ottawa

The design is certainly not inspiring however, the addition of residential units in the CBD and reduction of parking availability is a win.

[JHikka]

Can't complain about 200 new rental units in the CBD.

[Stuckinsky]

How is this building adding to Ottawa's downtown? I mean, common. RLA needs to get some real designs in and no more of these grey & black monolithic masses. That "refused Toronto design" that was mentioned is literally 12x better........ This project will likely get refused in udrp.

[Arcologist]

As soon as the docs are posted on the Ottawa Dev App and I find out who the City employee responsible for this file is, I'm going to write them demanding better architecture. There's no reason we keep getting this crap!

[Marshsparrow]

Originally Posted by Arcologist

As soon as the docs are posted on the Ottawa Dev App and I find out who the City employee responsible for this file is, I'm going to write them demanding better architecture. There's no reason we keep getting this crap!

We ARE Ottawa - therefore we get crap!

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by Arcologist

As soon as the docs are posted on the Ottawa Dev App and I find out who the City employee responsible for this file is, I'm going to write them demanding better architecture. There's no reason we keep getting this crap!

They were posted last week:
https://app01.ottawa.ca/postingplans/appDetails.jsf?lang=en&appId=__AGDBTC

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by Arcologist

As soon as the docs are posted on the Ottawa Dev App and I find out who the City employee responsible for this file is, I'm going to write them demanding better architecture. There's no reason we keep getting this crap!

Just got back from a weekend in downtown Toronto and I was musing about this building. The lowliest of low newish condo towers in Toronto look like the Taj Mahal compared to this.

[Proof Sheet]

Originally Posted by Arcologist

As soon as the docs are posted on the Ottawa Dev App and I find out who the City employee responsible for this file is, I'm going to write them demanding better architecture. There's no reason we keep getting this crap!

Good luck with that. Let us know how you get on.

[Arcologist]

Here are the comments I sent to the file lead on this proposal:

Good morning,

I'm writing to provide comments on this proposal. Generally, I like to try and point out the good and the bad, but in this case, there isn't much good to say about it other than it's bringing some much needed residential into the CBD. In every other aspect, this building falls far short of what this city deserves. We are the nation's capital, in case our developers and folks at City Hall forgot. We deserve better.

As it stands, the building's design is more suited to some Soviet-era communist housing block, not a G7 capital. Its dark, uninspiring, featureless exterior leaves much to be desired. Its uninviting entrance lacks warmth. The choice of colours and materials is atrocious. It looks cheap.

I suggest that the proposal, in its current form, be outright rejected. I hope others have contacted you expressing the same frustrations. I know there is a community of people in this city that still care about what gets built, and this proposal just doesn't cut it.

I look forward to hearing from you.

[Harley613]

My comment:

I have to say that this proposal is one of the most lackluster I have ever seen, even by Ottawa standards. I have watched developers (especially Claridge) bait the public with shiny proposals and renderings and then switch out at the last minute for completely different looking buildings with cheap materials for years and years and it is cheapening the look of this city. In this case they aren't trying to wow with a shiny proposal, they are starting right off the bat with a squat bland blight on the block. This has to be the most uninspired building proposal I have ever seen for our central business district. It is incredibly bland and drab. The height puts it in line with everything else on the block, furthering the canyon effect. I would like to see a little more height variation in order to eliminate the 'Great Wall' effect that is happening all over downtown Ottawa with dozens of 23-28 story buildings being lined up one after the other. This lot could accommodate a well designed 30 story building without affecting view planes of Parliament, preferably something more slender and elegant with lighter materials. This proposal in it's current form is a lot line to lot line hunk of dismal looking brick and concrete in it's current form. I would like to see this design be completely scrapped. We demand better for our City, especially so close to Parliament and in the heart of our city.

[McKellarDweller]

The comparison of Ottawa to Toronto is an issue on the consumer end.
People in downtown Toronto generally have better tastes, and better standards for the location and built environment of where they want to live/work-play than Ottawa. It isn’t just about the size of the population – there are plenty of Cities around the world with a population under 1.5M that have higher standards of built environment than Ottawa. Up-market and quality-over-quantity in Ottawa is a hard sell. We’ve seen excellent proposals like Joyce House fall by the wayside, and Canril having a terrible go at selling units in 90 George, resulting in dumping a group of unsold units to a bulk buyer a few years ago. It’s hard to expect a builder to really invest up-front in a very high quality product that SSPers are going to rave about, given Ottawa’s prevailing lame consumer tastes.

[Urbanarchit]

Originally Posted by McKellarDweller

The comparison of Ottawa to Toronto is an issue on the consumer end.
People in downtown Toronto generally have better tastes, and better standards for the location and built environment of where they want to live/work-play than Ottawa. It isn’t just about the size of the population – there are plenty of Cities around the world with a population under 1.5M that have higher standards of built environment than Ottawa. Up-market and quality-over-quantity in Ottawa is a hard sell. We’ve seen excellent proposals like Joyce House fall by the wayside, and Canril having a terrible go at selling units in 90 George, resulting in dumping a group of unsold units to a bulk buyer a few years ago. It’s hard to expect a builder to really invest up-front in a very high quality product that SSPers are going to rave about, given Ottawa’s prevailing lame consumer tastes.

Is that it though? I'd say people in Ottawa would like better but without much of a voice we get stuck with the usual garbage that we have no choice but to consider. The building from Toronto is not really that snazzy when you consider the materials; it's definitely doable in Ottawa (unless we require better insulated curtainwall than Toronto). Joyce House was far too expensive for what it was, and I'm willing to bet that the interiors were nothing altogether special that did not justify the high price they were selling for it. It was really just the outside, which was an attempt by the architect to make a faux-historique building that the twitter NIMBYs would approve of. I'd even suppose that with people moving from Toronto and Vancouver with more money to spend, Ottawa's tastes in better design would be heightened. It's just that established architects and developers do the same crap over and over again because it's affordable to build while commanding higher prices when sold.

[Postmaster]

Are they trying to design our downtown core to survive a nuclear attack? With this kind of flat mass, it seems plausible.

[J.OT13]

The Azure at Woodroffe and Richmond was another example of great architecture that flopped in Ottawa.

[Arcologist]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

The Azure at Woodroffe and Richmond was another example of great architecture that flopped in Ottawa.

Agreed, the Azure was a nice proposal, but what were its reasons for failing? Was it overpriced? Or was it some other underlying problem?