The Official Saint John, NB Project Thread

[adamuptownsj]

Originally Posted by bridgeoftea

I love the idea of extending the city as a grid past the Lower Cove Loop. Especially if the Sydney apartments goes through. Would be nice to keep extending the tight feel of shops, restaurants with residential all the way down. For most I don't think that's an unreasonable walk.

For all the ideas you've got there. Has there been any movement within the last 5 years or so to do anything similar?

Broadly... no. But!

Harbour Passage extension is slowly but definitely happening, it currently has been approved but not funded as far as Pitt/Broad.

I understand opening up German/Ross/LCL may be on the horizon as soon as next year. I'm pretty sure Crown/Britain terminates in business parking lots so there would be expropriation issues. St James/Crown has no excuse and could easily be extended. With St. James/Crown you could just end Brttain between Hughes and Eddy Group in a formal dead end without any harm.

The Catholic Church is spurring a lot of Waterloo Village development so with their new Cliff/Waterloo and Richmond/Waterloo projects something might come up in the area.

City parking strategy is definitely pro-reducing surface lots, but there's no grand plan. The Telegraph was build on a city-owned lot with active city support, they certainly aren't trying to increase parking lots at least.

UNBSJ recently moved their MBA to KSN/Charlotte so this wouldn't be impossible.

Regarding Smythe St, yes. The substation and its counterpart at Union and Crown are being consolidated between the highway and Paradise Row.

Canterbury/Princess is explicitly called out by the city as future development sites. With the Ritchie building (home of O'Leary's) getting serious renos and residential tenants, something could happen on the northern of these two lots.

[Fischbob]

Originally Posted by bridgeoftea

I'm curious, does anyone have any ideas for developments they'd do if you had all the funds and full approval?

I'm quite happy with the momentum we're seeing Uptown and on the Central Peninsula. I think the area is now widely recognized as a viable place to invest and develop. As such I would focus my hypothetical pile of capital and influence on bringing the Old North End and environs back to being a thriving, connected and amenity-rich neighbourhood. A few highlights of that vision:

Repair or replace dilapidated housing stock; fill in the gaps.
Restore those historic buildings that can be salvaged back to their former glory, inside and out; demolish those that are beyond repair. On the vacant land, build a fine-grained fabric of residential building stock consisting mainly of low-rise, ground/street oriented typologies such as duplex/triplex/fourplex/six-plexes, townhouses and stacked towns, imparting a bit of Montreal-style urbanity. Architectural styles would be a mix of designs inspired by the Italianate heritage vernacular of the neighbourhood and more contemporary designs.

Take back Main Street; (re)introduce commercial mixed use.
Local businesses and amenities on walkable commercial corridors would be a vital part of re-establishing a "complete community" for the North End. New development along Main Street would aim to create a semi-continuous streetscape of commercial storefronts from its terminus at Bridge all the way to the Viaduct, retaining heritage buildings where possible and providing infill over any gaps. The 6-lane cross section of Main Street would be reduced by half and the freed-up land developed as part of this process. The built form of new construction would be somewhat taller than the surrounding residential streets, allowing for mid-rise residential with commercial ground floors. I would buy out McDonald's at Lansdowne and Main and redevelop the site with a residential tower and commercial storefronts. I would also relocate that suburban-style fire station out of the heart of the neighbourhood to a more appropriate location and redevelop the site with a high-profile mixed-use building.

Connect and develop the Lansdowne corridor.
The parking lots, strip malls and lower-density houses along Lansdowne would be replaced with mid-to-high-rise residential with the opportunity to have podiums with larger-format retail stores and enclosed parking designed to serve both the immediate neighbourhood and the wider North-Central sector of Saint John. Victoria and Newman Streets would be extended from their current termini at Adelaide to connect with Lansdowne as part of this process, establishing more direct links from the Old North End.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at that for now.

[ColSJ]

The crane that serviced the Telegraph has moved to Millidgeville for the Sea-Bird Suites. This makes 2 cranes in the Millidgeville area.

[ColSJ]

30-unit residential building is proposed at 461 Millidge Avenue. Between this building, the medical office up the road, and the apartments at the corner of Daniel Ave, Millidge avenue is beginning to move away from a single household street to a dense corridor.

[ColSJ]

Five 4-unit and five 17-unit buildings are proposed for a new neighborhood off of Loch Lomand road.

[cdnguys]

Well it’s a good day notching up more developments. Today alone we learned of 173 units (Leinster St / Millidge Ave / Loch Lomand Rd). Plus we’ll have a clearer picture of Fundy Quay soon

[Fischbob]

In addition to the newly revealed residential projects, there's the proposal to create two commercial lots serviced by a new public street off Somerset between Superstore and the concrete plant (700 Somerset in next week's PAC agenda). Could possibly mean there's some new retail/restaurant development in the works.

[cdnguys]

[IMG] jinx gif[/IMG]

[bridgeoftea]

Looks a lot like the Telegraph building that's being finished uptown!

[adamuptownsj]

PAC votes down strange Loch Lomond 105-unit development proposal 5-3 after heavy local opposition.

https://tj.news/greater-saint-john/101720527

I totally agree with this decision. The four unit apartments are interesting and worth revisiting with a different site plan, but this was a flawed proposal. It failed to connect the Bonaccord and Lakefield subdivisions with an extended public road grid, which it should have, and the larger buildings are a really bad fit for the area.

Something like this with four unit buildings throughout would probably be better. https://imgur.com/a/iCfB4A3

[JHikka]

There's a big hill and dropoff between Bonaccord and the lake. Don't think it's that feasible to connect, really.

That said, yeah, we should stop building en masse subdivision infill in the East until we can figure out better transportation options and designs. Loch Lomond and Westmorland both get pretty bad during usual peak traffic and developments like this would only exacerbate the issue.

[adamuptownsj]

Originally Posted by JHikka

There's a big hill and dropoff between Bonaccord and the lake. Don't think it's that feasible to connect, really.

That said, yeah, we should stop building en masse subdivision infill in the East until we can figure out better transportation options and designs. Loch Lomond and Westmorland both get pretty bad during usual peak traffic and developments like this would only exacerbate the issue.

How steep is it, if they were proposing all this construction in between? At the very least Inverness should connect to Old Lake or something. Norman is clearly designed as a through street too.

In the medium term, you could probably fix a lot of pressure by connecting the Bonaccord subdivision to Lynn Ave in Forest Hills, presumably by Edinburgh. Extending Bonaccord/Mountain View to Golden Grove- and maybe Lakeview Heights (via Summit) would do wonders. You could move a lot of north/retail-bound traffic off Loch Lomond, which would make it more of a pure east-south connector.

[JHikka]

The issue then is that these subdivision streets aren't designed as throughways or traffic leads for other areas, and residents did not buy property with the anticipation that they would be. It's not as simple as shifting traffic off of our main throughfares (Loch Lomond) and onto side residential roads and calling it a day - it leads to incredible logistic issues and frankly probably makes things worse for both traffic and for residents.

If you're connecting Loch Lomond to Golden Grove then you're liking having to build a purpose-built throughway similar to something like Heather Way which can accommodate through traffic.

[adamuptownsj]

Originally Posted by JHikka

The issue then is that these subdivision streets aren't designed as throughways or traffic leads for other areas, and residents did not buy property with the anticipation that they would be. It's not as simple as shifting traffic off of our main throughfares (Loch Lomond) and onto side residential roads and calling it a day - it leads to incredible logistic issues and frankly probably makes things worse for both traffic and for residents.

If you're connecting Loch Lomond to Golden Grove then you're liking having to build a purpose-built throughway similar to something like Heather Way which can accommodate through traffic.

I mean, neither Loch Lomond or Golden Grove are purpose built as throughways, and look at them. I guess I should elaborate. If these residential areas had more than one entrance, residents could avoid choke points. I wouldn't imagine a connection would see too much through traffic.

Although a Wheeler style loop around the East side from Grandview Avenue, down Heather Way, intersecting with Loch Lomond and Golden Grove, and terminating at the Route 1/Rothesay Rd/Rothesay Ave interchange would be fascinating, and would help delimit an outer edge to the East Side.

[JHikka]

Any development like that would simply lead to the further suburb-ification of the East side, though, and as a city there'll have to be a discussion on what the future of the city looks like wrt development of its suburban lands. I'm all-for PAC and Council shooting down subdivision proposals if they're not thought out and don't contribute to the future growth of the city in a positive way. Suburban developments can be designed and built in a way where they're not a detriment to everything around them - Saint John just lacks them entirely.

[bridgeoftea]

Was gonna upload progress pics from the Milledgeville but can't figure how to get a photo up!
What's the secret?

[cdnguys]

Originally Posted by bridgeoftea

Was gonna upload progress pics from the Milledgeville but can't figure how to get a photo up!
What's the secret?

Upload your photos to IMGBB.COM
Once uploaded, change Embed code to “BBCode Medium Linked”
Then copy the link using the little “copy” icon on top right of box
Then come on this board and on new post click the “picture” icon and paste link into box.

[bridgeoftea]

[IMG] [/IMG]
HA!
There we go thank you!
Update from the Milledgeville site a few days ago.

[cdnguys]

St. Peter’s church off of Douglas / Clarendon will be torn down soon. What a beautiful park like property - hopefully be a nice housing project.

[bridgeoftea]

Not sure if this counts in the project thread. But, the Harbour Bridge construction might be one of the biggest disasters I've ever seen in my life. The fact that the re-opening of the northbound lane was delayed months and then when it was projected to open this Monday, it was delayed again.

I get that we are a smaller city, but the fact they are not working on this 24 hours a day 7 days a week to get it done seems mental to me. It probably comes down to workforce and those who have the skills to perform the work, but man it's ridiculous.