Terry Pender, Record staff – Mon Jan 14 2013 
KITCHENER — A 19-storey building with commercial outlets on the main floor, condominiums above and a parking garage tucked inside the building is slated for the corner of King and Victoria streets.
Momentum Developments is releasing more details of its plans for the gateway intersection at the west end of downtown Kitchener as it prepares for a public meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 6 at 7 p.m. in the Conestoga Room at City Hall.
After buying the property last year, the Waterloo-based developer and city officials began negotiating details around the design and size of the building.
“If you announce something and don’t do anything, you truly lose that momentum and the enthusiasm on the sales side, too,” Brian Prudham of Momentum Developments, said.
The building is called One Victoria Condominiums and is designed to attract and support pedestrians with a series of commercial spaces fronting onto the sidewalks of King and Victoria streets.
Above those commercial outlets will be residential units with balconies on the second, third and fourth floors overlooking the sidewalks and streets of both Victoria and King. Residents will be able to easily see what’s happening on the sidewalks and streets around them.
The parking will be underground. More parking will be provided in a garage that is tucked inside the building. The commercial spaces and residential units will between the sidewalks and the parking garage inside.
“A lot of thought went into it,” Prudham said.
That’s important because a parking garage at street level would kill any chance an interesting and lively pedestrian environment. The building will be kitty corner to the Region of Waterloo’s central transit station and the area will have a lot more people walking around it in a few years.
“We have tweaked it a few times now to make sure we get the right look and feel,” Prudham said. “It’s an important corner so we wanted to make sure it is right.”
At 19 floors, One Victoria will not break any records for residential buildings in the central part of the city. Residential buildings with similar heights are found on Church Street and Queen Street North.
“We are excited about it,” Prudham said. “We think we are going to get some positive reaction.”
One Victoria Condominiums is the third large, private-sector investment in that part of the downtown, and it will not be the last, Rick Haldenby, the director of the University of Waterloo school of architecture, said.
Haldenby believes the light rail transit lines that will be coming to downtown Kitchener will spur redevelopment of all the surface-parking lots that now dominate that part of the neighbourhood during the next 10 years.
Expect high-density, mixed-use buildings to be constructed on lots that are now litter-strewn, windswept expanses of asphalt after 5 p.m. and on weekends.
“Core areas are going to become more intense,” Haldenby said.
Provincial legislation that aims to slow urban sprawl, a cohort of people who want to live and work downtown and the coming of light rail transit will ensure the redevelopment happens, Haldenby said.
“All of these things are adding up to suggest that the downtown cores will be more densely developed for both residential and office-commercial-retail,” Haldenby said.
The successful redevelopment of the former Lang tannery at Charles and Victoria streets and the stunning conversion of the old factories along Breithaupt Street pointed the west end of downtown in a new direction, he said.
Haldenby likes the idea of hiding the parking below and within the building.
“That is a well-defined strategy, it was done years ago in Toronto and Vancouver,” Haldenby said. “As long as the street faces are animated and occupied, it is probably OK.”
The development has the support of Coun. Frank Etherington, who represents that part of the downtown.
“From where I sit, it is a fabulous addition to Ward 9 and the west end of the downtown,” Etherington said. “I am sure it will provide housing for people working at the Tannery, which is nearby and for other people who want to walk or bike to work in the core.”
Momentum Developments is doing The Red Condominium at the corner at King Street South and Allen Street in Waterloo — just across the street from the Bauer Lofts. That building should be ready in June.
tpender@therecord.com
http://www.therecord.com/news/local/article/869132