The Waterfall building is slated for the parking lot at Douglas Street and Courtney. Locals know the site as the old Classic Car Museum lot. The Empress Hotel / conference centre is kitty corner at the bottom.
Naysayers have already voiced their opposition, but they've been losing most of the high profile battles lately so hopefully the trend will continue. That parking lot is a major league eyesore.
Big parking lots are becoming an endangered species in Victoria all of a sudden. Two new highrises (20 and 16 stories) are almost complete on the lot beside the green tinted Marriott Hotel at the right, and two more buildings (12 stories) have been approved for the parking lot in the lower right (which has since been excavated). As usual, the height of these new buildings is causing a stir, even though the tallest of them is only 20 stories. Victoria's reigning tallest building was built in...1969.
Good times. Let's hope all of these new proposals get built before the real estate bubble bursts. In my opinion Victoria is defining itself pretty well as a small city with high quality architecture, even if the buildings themselves aren't particularly tall. The raging anti-development crowd claims it's the end of the world and the suddenly emboldened pro-development crowd wants 30 story buildings, but if they'd both just calm down for a moment I think they'd realize we've arrived at a pretty nice compromise.