[Jasoncw]

Their criticisms being:

- It doesn't have a setback.

- It has ground floor retail.

- The massing doesn't respond to context, even though the massing is pretty standard urban massing (the massing is basically a pre-war H plan) and the building is downtown.

- The people who bought houses behind the street that's been getting large scaled development for decades are upset that there's a large scale development happening.


They also don't like the materials (although one of the architects on the board spoke in their favor) even though it's the only development that seems to have nice materials. Some nice glazed black brick with wood. Maybe the bricks won't have enough expansion joints for their tastes? Or they prefer the holy trifecta of glass curtain wall, precast concrete panels, and brick?


I agree that the development is on the big side, but I think it's important to build as densely as possible on the remaining sites downtown, or else you'll have to resort to demolishing good buildings in order to grow. The massing is a little clunky, but at least it's simple and straightforward, and not a convoluted mess.

I think this is an improvement over all of the other recent residential buildings.