Guelph 70 Fountain Street East | ?m | 16s | SkyDev | srm Architects

emphurent

emphurent

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This site is located pretty much adjacent to the soon to be updated Guelph GO station. (and hopefully soon to be serviced frequently pls!)

Initially this was a 25s proposal, that was brought down to 16s by the OLT.

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This is intended to be rental, with an office component housing the head office of Skyline, and may include keeping a portion of the facade of the current building.

As these are outdated now, things will look different in any upcoming application, I will just bring forward this podium render, others can be viewed here.

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Man, I used to live on Surrey Street, just one street over from Fountain. That kind of scale reminds me that the Guelph I once knew is long gone. Drove through town on the way to Elora last week and marveled again at all the build-out in the south end of the city. Miles and miles of suburban housing. Downtown is still pretty though. That armory building on the left hand side of the first pic is pretty cool and there's still lots of limestone buildings in the core.
 
Additional renderings of the previous 25-storey design have been added to the database. I will post one here to show the full elevation of the proposal:
Building-Elevations-and-Renderings-75-Farquhar-70-Fountain-43.jpg
 
I spent 4 very fine years in downtown Guelph taking the bus up the hill. This is a downtown area full of fine heritage buildings and deserves to be treated with very sympathetic planning. Density can be surely added to take advantage of the location, amenities and the ambience of the area, but not necessarily height - just because height adds density. Plenty of room on the edges of the DT area for height, within the DT area, a more scaled version of infill height would be fantastic.

And that thing above is hideous. What's with the top? It looks like an out house addition.
 
Me, I always walked up Gordon to the uni, complete with a Walkman for musical company. Went for one year, just to get a quick Bachelor's degree - stayed for seven. Great town, great vibe. University towns always have a certain vitality to them. Even so, the Ward was a poor, run-down neighborhood back then - but last I checked - maybe five years ago now, some of the old warehouses have been converted for residential. It's good to see.
 
innsertnamehere said:
given the recent OP changes in Guelph, I'd be surprised if Skyline doesn't immediately reapply for 23 again.
Click to expand...

Skyline has bought up a lot of buildings downtown Guelph. It's all going to get re-developed. One of the two brothers that's owns Skyline, lives on the top floor penthouse at the Gummer building on Douglas Street, which i was in. It was pretty sweet.
 
I don't get it. Does good design cost more? I'm assuming they could come up with better than this with the same materials.
 
gabe said:
Skyline has bought up a lot of buildings downtown Guelph. It's all going to get re-developed. One of the two brothers that's owns Skyline, lives on the top floor penthouse at the Gummer building on Douglas Street, which i was in. It was pretty sweet.
Click to expand...
Ah, the Gummer building... I know a lawyer who had his offices in there for years. Sweet building, excellent location.
 
Issues of height(16 stories seems plenty tall enough) and overall aesthetic aside, it's encouraging to see the area south of the tracks starting to resemble something of an extension of the downtown core. This part of downtown has long been a neglected expanse of empty parking lots interspersed with the odd government-type building, but it once was very different. I can remember in the late 60s' and early 70s when many of those parking lots still had houses on them, the main fire hall used to be a Loblaws, there used to be a walk-up style Dairy Queen across the street, and on the southwest corner of Wyndham and Wellington(in those days, Wellington never extended east of Wyndham) was a boarded-up, 'ancient' stone building(? casket factory) as well as a Canadian Tire store. This area has exciting potential with the restoration of the old Drill Shed and future redevelopment of the Armory building(it would make an ideal farmer's market, hotel, etc.). Hopefully, this new tower will spur some of that new development.
 
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