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Originally Posted by Keith P.
Great photo that illustrates how lackluster the development and architecture outside the downtown core in the south end has been - from the awful-looking Peter Green Hall to the horrid cookie-cutter gabled-roof condos/apartment low-rises west of Tower Rd to the scruffy-looking precast concrete apartment buildings. Just bad.
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The same process that created these ugly buildings is playing out on Wellington Street right now. The original proposal was for a couple of mediocre towers but then the neighbourhood freaked out because they were too tall. There does not seem to be any pressure to make them more attractive, since people say they uniformly hate all new construction, but there is pressure to make the development as small and consequently as cheap as possible. Those cookie-cutter lowrise buildings are what you get with as-of-right development.
I wonder how much nicer these buildings could have been if all the money that went into court appeals and so on had been put into public-facing design elements instead. I bet the appeal process is a significant part of the cost of development in the South End.