AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
I think it's also easy to ignore the working realities that come in trying to use older stately heritage buildings like this in a modern context. By all accounts the inside of this building is nothing to write home about (at best) and the proposal will at least serve to open up and integrate the building into the city.
As it stands it is undoubtedly beautiful, but it's almost monolithic in its inaccessibility. The major heritage elements of this building are relatively untouched in the proposal while also adding more mixed uses to the core on a very challenging site. Overall, I'm pretty happy with what they're trying to pull off and am excited to grab a drink in the hotel bar here at some point in the future.
There is the question of scale of the addition to consider as well - one thing to add a few discreet floors; another to basically cram as much density as possible - for economic reasons - within the context of a system unwilling/able to control the scale of the development. The "negatives" you have mentioned isn't solved by density - it is solved by good retrofitting. The issue here is a property that is being sold by the Feds at a price that dictated this level of development in order to generate a reasonable ROI for the current owner.
AoD
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