Winnipeg | Osborne Village & Corydon area

[Malcsta]

Originally Posted by ColdRain&Snow

As for the project at McMillan @ Stafford, I haven't seen anything come through City Council recently. This is the project that was originally rejected by the community committee, but then the developer appealed the community committee decision and the project went to the Appeals Committee. The Appeals Committee (which did not include the local councilor, Sherri Rollins) then overturned the rejected variances and allowed the project, causing a bunch of controversy. That was back in January 2021, and the only thing that has happened on-site since then is the existing houses were demolished.

As far as I can tell, the developer is working on a new design. Here was the original design, which contained 22 residential units and 2 commercial units:



Looking at the architect's website, it seems that the new design is 30 residential units with 2,565 sq ft of commercial space (not sure how many commercial units). Here's what is currently shown on the architect's website:



Website: https://www.dwelldesignbuilders.com/...olio/mcmillian

Ugh. Its just the same uninspired, grey minecraft block looking buildings going up everywhere these days.

[lbnevs]

Originally Posted by Kris22

This has to be one of the ugliest and cheapest looking buildings to go up in Winnipeg in the last 10 years. I have no problem with the orange colour, but every single other element of the design is just god awful. The materials used, the way the siding panels look like different tones, the way the materials meet at corners and at the roof, the cheap ass, ugly balconies, that weird smooth grey patch between the windows and the balconies (seriously wtf). This is industrial wasteland architecture.

There's lots of interesting deviations from their renders/proposal.



One of the interesting ones is the northwest corner. In the renders, the side has a windowless block with a large Zu logo, and the first fifth or so of the ground floor facing Osborne is stone. In reality, there are windows along that corner and the ground floor has glazing all along the streetscape. I wonder if that corner initially had a stairwell or something mechanical -- or if they've just tried to add more residential units and make the ground floor commercial more easily divisible.

The balconies look much shallower than the renders, and they're not the same colour grey as the grey panels on the orange building. The grey looked pretty bad in the renders, and this is part of why it looks even worse in reality. The wood balcony soffits in the render haven't been installed yet -- we'll see what they end up doing with them.

The colour of the orange is also much less of a dusty copper (as the renders suggested) and more of a 70s harvest gold.

And obviously the estate of Keith Haring drives a hard bargain, because the painted murals are now of green monstera leaves instead of little Haring figures.

It's definitely not going to win any design awards. The orange building in particular is pretty cheap looking. But at the end of the day, let's remember that the orange building is a whole pile of new residential units replacing a beer store and parking lot.



The Village has great architecture and crappy architecture. It'll survive an ugly building or two and still have lots of character. What's important is adding housing stock and creating more of a continuous streetscape where there used to be "missing teeth".

[bon_vivant]

Originally Posted by lbnevs

The Village has great architecture and crappy architecture. It'll survive an ugly building or two and still have lots of character. What's important is adding housing stock and creating more of a continuous streetscape where there used to be "missing teeth".

Agreed. Love it or hate it, it will serve the Village much better than the hotel did.