Conrad Black
Senior Member
Coming along nicely.
CanadianNational
Senior Member
From the bus, on the Gardiner, on a cellphone, on the wrong side of the aisle:
Conrad Black
Senior Member
^ lol!
UrbanAffair
Senior Member
SP!RE
°°°°°°
And you actually caught it perfectly from the moving bus! These are efforts only UTers would go to, and I respect that. Haha. =D
RiverCity1
Active Member
udo
Active Member
I never noticed the awkward looking, cut off building on the east side of Waterlink at Pier 27. Looks out of proportion / balance to me. Are they hoping to add to it later?
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DSC
Superstar
Member Bio
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Tulse
Senior Member
I'm very surprised that a) they had such concerns, and b) that they had the power to enforce them on a project owned by someone else.
Xray_Crystal_Junkie
Senior Member
Except the wall doesn't even extend to the top three floors. Unless those are purely mechanical?
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Are they going to be doing anything on the rooftop of the "bars"? It would be a stunning amenity space.
AoD
AoD
guitarchitect
Active Member
They haven't clad it yet - it'll be opaque/translucent, not vision glass.
Unfortunately I don't recall the legal parts of the deal... it could have been any number of things: CofA/Variances were required and they needed the support of their neighbour, or Redpath owned the lands and as part of the purchase agreement the owner would have to ensure that certain concerns would be dealt with (like the worry of seeing the operations). Most likely it was as part of the rezoning process - I'm pretty sure the land wasn't originally zoned for a Residential Use. In that case Redpath as an adjacent land owner could more or less say "If you don't keep us happy, we won't support you and we'll hold up your project for as long as it takes."
I also recall that there was a typical psychological factor at play since it's a residential operation next to an industrial one. The idea is that if one can see a neighbouring industrial operation, it's going to sound louder than it actually is. To be clear, I'm not saying that's correct or incorrect - but it's something that comes up in every rezoning process of Residential adjacent to Industrial, and sometimes it's even the City making that request. Redpath didn't want the Condo to be built and then have a bunch of angry condo owners trying to get them shut down (as has happened elsewhere), so they drew a line in the sand that said "we don't want any resident to be able to see any part of our operation from anywhere on your site." Either that, or it was the City saying that - again, my memory on this one is a bit fuzzy... but Redpath did have requests about no one being able to look at their operations.
As an aside, maybe this will help explain the City's approach to properties:
I worked on a site at Queen + Dufferin that was adjacent to a light industrial land, and the city was requesting all kinds of sound + vision mitigation factors on the part of the building that faced the operation (which was literally a fruit distribution business... so it was just trucks entering/leaving). The building was fronting on Dufferin Street, so the same trucks that were entering/leaving the fruit property were driving past the building in order to get there. So the trucks when they're on Dufferin are just part of "life in the city", but the second they go onto a piece of private property you need sound deflecting opaque walls facing the site so that you can't see or hear them. Those same units were facing the rail corridor, with trains going by that are much louder than any kind of trucks. And when driving down Dufferin the trucks were about 10 meters away from the building - on the fruit property they were 40 or 50 metres away. It literally makes no sense, but them's the rules.
RiverCity1
Active Member
Makes sense. I can also see that people would chose to buy here, THEN complain about being next door neighbours with Redpath. I'm pretty sure that the sugar industry is doing fantastic (considering that sugar is now in everything...even in sugar 
), and that they won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
The highest and best use of that site is a sugar factory. Plus, it's a monument to our industrial past...and I like it...just not sure I'd want to live right beside it as the fumes give me a headache when I shop at Loblaws.
), and that they won't be going anywhere anytime soon. The highest and best use of that site is a sugar factory. Plus, it's a monument to our industrial past...and I like it...just not sure I'd want to live right beside it as the fumes give me a headache when I shop at Loblaws.
udo
Active Member
Thank you guitarchitect for all the insight you are sharing. Very interesting.