Neighbourhood weighs in

Posted by Magda
Neighbours of a proposed redevelopment of St. Paul's School have hired an architect, who happens to be one of their neighbours, to come up with a redevelopment that works for them.

The residents are upset that the developer plans to add a floor on top of the school, and to put offices in it along with building townhouses. They propose instead tearing the school down and building just townhouses.

You can see the plan, by Daphne Wainman-Wood of Talo Architect Inc., here. Read more about this in the paper one of these days, perhaps even tomorrow.

Comments

[Jerry Prager]

Call me Old School.

The developer said "I have yet to do any development where the neighbourhood comes out and jumps for joy."

Perhaps he should design for joy, after all, 'seek and ye shall find' is what special relativity suggests consistent choice leads to: your Point of View establishes how you come to view the point of your existence.
"In your beginning is your end." You reap what you sow." "Karma chameleon."

StatsCan (or someone) just announced that most of the jobs created in the past year were not in the private sector (which laid people off) but in the independent sector, which means that people created jobs for themselves. Officially, those kinds of jobs are valued less by statistical economists because they lack the benefit packages provided by public and corporate employers.

So how are the last two paragraphs related to the same issue ?

The neighbours, the developer and the city should all be considering ways of reconstructing the old school as a self-entrepreneurial, neighbourhood work space that is the size of a foot-print rather than the size of a tire-tread.

May they all find joy.

[Harry Tidge]

Is it not interesting NIMBYism is alive and well in Guelph.
We all agree that we must go back to the village concept, residences, stores and working opportunities all within a walkable community.
And then when a developer tries to develop such a solution, the opponents jump out to block it.
Whst was it the former Mayor of Burlington said?
-something to the effect that the only thing people object to more than urban scrawl is intensification.
Mr. Prager, your attitude is exactly what is wrong with the self serving hypocrits of this City. If you really agree with the "global village", then quit carping.

Harry

[Edgar]

Look at the site and the surrounding area. 100m away there is plenty of underutilized commercial space at the corner of Municipal and Edinburgh. Developers should make better use of this already-zoned land before moving onto a residential street for commercial. There is a house next to the school that you can almost reach out and touch when standing next to the school.

Most of all, I agree with Jerry's point about joy. Intensification will be embraced and welcomed ONLY when developers start building something half decent. Something that is inspiring, unique, quality, and architecturally beautiful. Infill and intensification in Guelph to date has been case-after-case of taking the same old suburban style and plunking it into any open space. People don't generally object to infill/intensification, they only object to BAD infill.

If the space is for medical offices, there are zoned sites on Gordon Street and in the deep south end just waiting for someone to building medical offices.