Queen's Square (247 Queen St E, Brampton, 15s, Kohn Partnership Architects) COMPLETE

[DKsan]

I've been busing past this site for a few weeks now. Right at the corner of Queen Street and Hanson Road South. The site has been dug up.

It's a public housing building, with a partnership between Kohn, Supporting Housing in Peel (SHiP), and Martinway Development, with funding from the Region of Peel. HERE

From the Kohn website:

Located at the corner of Queen Street East and Hansen Road, this mixed-use high rise building will act as a gateway to Brampton from the east. Designed in response to the program requirements of Peel Housing, the project consists of 205 rental supportive housing units, 12,000 sf of grade-related retail space and 21,000 sf of head office space for SHiP. Due to the restrictive nature of the site, common amenity areas are located on the 15th floor and provide access to shared landscaped rooftop terraces.

Facts:
15 stories
First floor ground retail
Second floor office
13 stories of rental units
Rents will be set at 80% average market rate
About half will be filled by those on waiting lists, the other half will be market rent.

 

[TOareaFan]

This is a pretty exciting project for Brampton (and I am a bit surprised it is receiving so little "press"....the first story about it in the local paper appeared today).

Aside from being a reasonably attractive, mixed use building with its parking tucked/hidden in behind.....it represents the first of the lands formerly occupied by car dealerships to be redeveloped and provide some height/density!

When the city first developed its Queen Street Corridor strategy, what, 20 years ago this was what they wanted. Since them there are 3 or 4 of the old dealerships that have sat empty waiting for something to happen...this first step might be a bit of a catalyst and it is an interesting project.

EDIT...oops, forgot, this is the second one as the Ford Dealership on the southwest corner of Kennedy and Queen along with the Canadian Tire beside it gave way to the new Shoppers Drug Mart mall and the Rythm by Mattamy....I guess I don't count that one as there was no gap between the closure of the old use and the redevelopment. For the most part the former Attrell Toyota, Brampton Chrysler, and others have gone and been replaced by vacant land.....this is the first of those to see some action!

 

[DKsan]

It took some digging to find this project. I was lucky I managed to grab a glance at the board that said the developer's name.

I couldn't find it on the city of Brampton website, and there are a bunch of signs of the redevelopments happening that I can't find easily. :/

 

[Hipster Duck]

Not bad. If all goes according to plan, Queen street in Brampton will probably end up looking a bit like Wilshire Boulevard in LA. That's not a bad first step - you can't expect Paris overnight.

 

[innsertnamehere]

When the BRT lanes get built Queen street will look quite good.

 

[interchange42]

Here's what it looked like on July 30th:

42

 

[TOareaFan]

building is coming along nicely, I will try and nip out and get some pics over the weekend.

 

[salsa]

So Brampton is actually capable of building something else other than cookie cutter subdivisions at the edge of the city? A rare achievement.

 

[innsertnamehere]

It's public housing from what I recall, hardly worthy of an achievement award.

 

[TOareaFan]

So Brampton is actually capable of building something else other than cookie cutter subdivisions at the edge of the city? A rare achievement.

Brampton, like all cities, does not build these things....they simply approve them or not. The list of buildings of size, density and quality that Brampton has approved but have not been built (and likely will not be built in my lifetime) is quite long. The city is not blocking building density/height along the Queen/Main corridors.....the market is.

This one is being built (like the one on John street downtown and the one further west on Queen at the legion) because it is, mostly, subsidized housing and far less dependent on market forces than the many approved buildings that have not been built.

 

[TOareaFan]

Its public housing from what I recall, hardly worthy of an achievement award.

mixed...part subsidized and part market rental.

 

[TOareaFan]

here are some vaguely adequate photos of this building from this past Saturday afternoon. Not sure I recall a building that is so true to the original renderings as this....so if you liked what was promised, you will like what is nearly complete!

 

[Edward Skira]