Northern Ontario developments! - Page 95

TbayON · #**1881** Posted **Feb 6, 2013, 7:14 PM**

City Hall has confirmed today that the development underway at the corner of Carrick and the Harbour Expressway is a Holiday Inn Hotel. The company has pulled a permit for foundation work. The hotel will be 3 storeys high and 88 rooms in size.

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/news/2626...Intercity-area

Dwils01 · #**1882** Posted **Feb 11, 2013, 7:16 PM**

Remember this proposal, well it's back.

Quote:

After 16 months of silence, the Toronto-based
owners of the former Northern Breweries property have revealed that they plan to begin
demolition of the century-old building this spring.
Nirmala Singh, a representative for the new owners who bought the 1.8 acre Bay Street
brewery site in April 2011 from the City for $380,000, confirmed Monday morning from
Toronto that they had hired both a Sault construction company and an engineering firm
for the first stage of the project.
Singh said, “We are proceeding 100 per cent. We are trying to hire as many local people
as possible for the project. At this stage, a local firm has been hired for the demolition.
An engineering firm locally has also been hired.”
Ivan Champagne, a senior employee of T.C. Contracting Inc., confirmed that the local
company has been hired to demolish the former brewery. He said that his company hopes
to begin demolition of the building sometime this March, depending on their preliminary
assessments of the site now underway.

Don't know if the design or height will be the same but this project looks to be going through.

Read more here: http://www.city.sault-ste-marie.on.c...weriesBoom.pdf

tjernobyl · #**1883** Posted **Feb 17, 2013, 10:04 PM**

I went to Kam Park this afternoon, and saw that the small elevator on the island was being demolished. Does anyone know the history of that structure, or any future plans for the site?

vid · #**1884** Posted **Feb 17, 2013, 10:40 PM**

The scrap yard is removing it to increase their space. It's been in progress for about a month now.

The vacant building at the corner of Cumming and McKenzie burned this morning.

TbayON · #**1885** Posted **Feb 18, 2013, 2:44 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid

The vacant building at the corner of Cumming and McKenzie burned this morning.

Another old relic of Fort William gone. Won't be much left in that area at this rate.

====

Resolute is seriously looking at re-positioning the mostly idled Fort Frances mill. Sounds like they are going to do their damndest to get a new product line in at the mill. I think they are really worried they will lose access to the area's fibre basket unless they get producing something again. The Ontario government seems to be following through on their threats to take harvesting rights away if a company is not going to put wood to use that has been allocated to them.

http://www.workingforest.com/resolut...-frances-mill/

Other developments/updates locally:

-Construction is in full swing at the former Intercity Zellers location that is becoming Target. Some small additions are being put on the store to square off the old entrances right now. The contractors on site seem to have multiple shifts on the go, indicating a desire to get things done quickly.

-On the opposite end of things, progress at the new ToysRUs store has pretty well stalled. Supposedly a tender went out recently for finishing the interior work. Wonder what has gone wrong there?

-A new store is going in at Intercity mall near the food court. No idea who for sure, could be Maurices though as they are opening a local store

-The new TBayTel Engineering building is pretty well up and almost closed in. Not surprising given its not an overly large building

-The TBRHSC and the TBRRI finally announced that the cyclotron will be installed in the new Health Services Building to be constructed on Oliver Rd in the very near future. The move will save the hospital $1 million over putting the unit in a stand alone building, which was the original plan. Funding was announced years ago for the project, and there has been a lot of delay in getting it installed since then. Hopefully this announcement means things will finally be moving forwards

-Marriott is going up slowly still, piles are being driven for the Holiday Inn, both at Carrick and the Harbour

-No noticeable sign of progress at The Club Condos at TBCC. This project makes the city's waterfront private development look more and more spectacular all the time, in terms of the city's ability to pull it off

-Supposedly OPG is looking at biomass as an option for the TBGS. Good luck finding enough biomass to ever keep the thing going for any duration of time, I say (unless OPG intends to turn it into a peaking plant like Atikokan). Needless to say, if OPG is going to keep the plant open and if power is needed in NWO, the TBGS will absolutely be burning coal past 2014. There is no way any conversion away from coal, or the east-west tie line can be built in time to prevent this now.

vid · #**1886** Posted **Feb 21, 2013, 12:22 AM**

Tony Clement came to town yesterday and gave us 29 gazebos worth of funding.

The contractors at the Thunder Bay Country Club condo project were found not guilty. Construction will resume shortly.

TbayON · #**1887** Posted **Feb 23, 2013, 2:19 AM**

Transit office and garage on Fort William Rd is set to undergo an interior renovation in the coming months. Part of the reno has to do with transit taking over Hagi services and the other part is upgrades required to the mechanical systems in the building that have come to the end of their expected life span. About $1.15 million has been budgeted for the project.

Some of Tony Fednor's 29 gazebos worth of funding will be going to the airport. The airport will be using the money to expand their industrial park ($1.5 million) and is on top of another $1.5 million the province put forward to the project. The airport is putting out the other one-third of the cost of the project.

Council is heading to the Ontario Good Roads Conference looking for funding for the Golf Links corridor. The city has put money aside for the project, but they were banking on support from higher levels of government to get the job done. The stretch from the Harbour Expressway to Oliver Rd will be four-laned, and some intersection improvements made starting this summer.

The road over rail debate into the ROF has heated up again. A report released by Tetra Tech said that the capital costs of building a road are slightly less than rail (road-$1 billion, rail-$1.5 billion), but that shipping by truck will be as much as 10 times more expensive than by train. Ontario is going back to the table with Cliffs to discuss putting a road into the ROF despite the report.

Chadillaccc · #**1888** Posted **Feb 23, 2013, 6:44 AM**

How tall is the new courthouse? Including the mechanical box on top? I believe it should be at least as tall as Clark Towers, so it should be on the diagrams.

Edit: I just checked the diagram, and clark towers is listed as 'High rise' while the Courthouse is listed as 'low rise', even though, in the diagram the Courthouse is ahead of Clark towers. That should be re-evaluated, and hopefully a skilled diagrammer can do one, I've tried, but I'm not good at 3D diagrams.

toaster · #**1889** Posted **Feb 23, 2013, 5:17 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dwils01

Remember this proposal, well it's back.

Don't know if the design or height will be the same but this project looks to be going through.

Read more here: http://www.city.sault-ste-marie.on.c...weriesBoom.pdf

This is great news for the Sault! 30 stories and 272 units, will probably have the highest density for a building in all of Northern Ontario.

vid · #**1890** Posted **Feb 23, 2013, 11:26 PM**

The new courthouse is definitely taller than Clark Towers. It's taller than Paterson Court and the Royal Edward, as well. I think I heard 150 feet (43m) a couple times.

It's a very large building.

TbayON · #**1891** Posted **Feb 24, 2013, 12:57 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid

The new courthouse is definitely taller than Clark Towers. It's taller than Paterson Court and the Royal Edward, as well. I think I heard 150 feet (43m) a couple times.

It's a very large building.

You think it is that tall? I would think it would be quite a bit short than that at only 7 or 8 stories high. Waverly Towers is in the 160 ft range I am pretty sure, and it has 16 floors. I realize the floors in residential high rises aren't as tall, but having twice as many floors should still make up for shorter levels. I could be wrong though, judging building heights is difficult if you ask this guy. The courthouse definitely shows from multiple views around the city on the skyline and is certainly noticeable over a lot of other taller buildings.

Chadillaccc · #**1892** Posted **Feb 24, 2013, 1:14 AM**

Office floor heights and residential floor heights are very different. Sometimes an office can be 18 stories and be 100 meters, while a 28 story residential tower could be 90 meters.

vid · #**1893** Posted **Feb 24, 2013, 1:53 AM**

I can see the entire top floor (and some of the 6th floor) over the top of Paterson Court, which is in between the courthouse and my apartment. And Paterson Court is 10 storeys. You get the same effect from the western end of McKellar Island, but with the Royal Edward instead. Even from ground level the entire top floor is visible above the Royal Edward.

TbayON · #**1894** Posted **Feb 24, 2013, 2:20 AM**

Yea I guess it is pretty big (by Thunder Bay standards) when you look at it from that viewpoint. Certainly makes Patterson Court and the Royal Eddy look pretty insignificant. How long has it been since a building of that general height has been constructed in Thunder Bay? I can't even think of the last one... it has been quite a while.

Any ideas on what the heights of the Vue Condos and the Delta will be? Those 3 structures are really going to make a difference to the skyline in the north end of town.

vid · #**1895** Posted **Feb 24, 2013, 3:06 AM**

This is the tallest building to be built in the city since Maple Crest Towers in 1988. Before that was Waverley Park Towers in 1971, and Red River and Acadamy Towers both in the 1960s. Paterson Court was built in the mid 1980s. West Arthur Place was built in 1975.

The condos and hotel are capped at 25m and 28m, so they'll be about the same height as the buildings across the street. The Prince Arthur's upper floors will have an unobstructed view over the tops of them, toward Pie Island.

TbayON · #**1896** Posted **Feb 27, 2013, 3:46 PM**

Northwoods Foods is closing in July. The announcement, that has surprised many, was made yesterday. Management at Northwood Park Plaza and Northwoods Foods were not in a position to renew the lease for the space. Management at Northwood Park Plaza have said that they are "looking at other options for the space". Rumours are swirling that Loblaw's discount grocery retailer No Frills is setting up in town, with a store at County Fair, and possibly another at Northwood Park Plaza. From a demographic standpoint, these two locations make good sense for a No Frills store. I am sure Loblaws is concerned with competing with Wal-Mart, especially with the opening of two new stores locally in the recent months.