2012-03-31

@chadbuck

@FACLC but your previous tweets state that #ECCA doesn't inhibit #yeg then you blame zoning which is it?

The correct answer, of course, is that the reason there are no tall buildings in Edmonton is zoning. The downtown airport has nothing to do with it. As I've written before, everybody blaming the City Centre Airport for the lack of tall buildings is either lying to you (the closure fetishists) or regurgitating a lie told to them by the closure fetishists.

So let's look at a couple of illustrative examples:

This first image is a currently empty property at the corner of 79th Avenue and 101st Street, just south of Whyte Avenue. One may note that this is 5.614km away from the closest tip of the airport's runway -- twice as far as the skyscrapers already on Jasper Avenue. There is now one of the signs promoting the city's zoning classification for this property, and the maximum height allowed on the site is....(wait for it)...24 metres. Yes, that's right, far more distant from the runway than any skyscraper, the City of Edmonton has decreed a building may not exceed six stories. Chad previously mentioned 490 feet as the "maximum allowable height" because of the airport. Yet City Hall has capped this building at 79 feet -- a mere 16% of the maximum height allowable.

What was my contention again? Oh yes, that the reason Edmonton is lacking tall buildings is entirely city zoning unrelated to the existence of the City Centre Airport. Hmmm, seems to be validated here.

The reality is that between the wishes of developers and the wishes of the brain dead dolts who are responsible for the City of Edmonton planning department, Edmonton is left lacking in the low building department. Then, money-grubbing pukes like Mandel and his developer friends use their own deliberate actions as proof that the airport is keeping the city down. It's a nice little scam here Chad, and you fell for it.

Just one more example, just for fun: this one highlights the developers and planners combining to have non-tall buildings in this city. Again, if you don't want tall buildings, fine, or if there's a reason to keep them low, fine: just don't go later and complain about no tall buildings and blame any reason that meets your goal of turning the City Centre airport into the Mandel/Iveson "green" urban slums of 2025.


This picture here shows the new (<10 years old) condos built on the old railway lands between 109th and 111th Streets. At the bottom of the picture you can see a medium-sized skyscraper: the "Jasper Oneleven" condos (home of Fiesty Bar Girls Inc.) that houses the Black Sheep Pub (former Stonehouse). It's 25 stories or so as memory serves. Another 12-15 story condo tower is visible at the top of the picture just south of Grant MacEwan. Clearly in this span between Jasper Ave and 104th Ave (again, barely a mile and a half from the airport) you can handle buildings of this height. The Jasper on 11th has been around for decades, but the two condos directly above it (including the one with the cool second-story pedway) are again less than 10 years old. Both of them are only four stories tall (as in, even shorter than the 79 feet allowed south of Whyte Avenue). Why? Well, the developer wanted a building like that, and the City ensured it happened.

None of these have anything to do with the airport. Blaming the airports for tall buildings is incorrect, and should cease immediately.