The Z6 condo under construction at the corner of Balsam and Booth is finally showing some signs of its final look. The picture above shows the brickwork on the Balsam side. It is considerably less-detailed than promised in the advertising picture, but that’s just quibbling. The building is a breath of fresh air on Booth Street and in the centre of the neighborhood which dearly needs a shot in the arm, a visible testimony that someone has faith in the community’s future. The remaining yellow panels will be clad in various metal sidings.
The building appears to have an interesting mix of very large and “regular sized” (you know, 4’x10′) balconies. The second and fourth floor units have large roof terraces as they are set back from the floors below. The ground floor back apartment also has a really generous terrace overlooking the sedum-planted green roof. Several ledges around the building also have green roof plantings and there is a rainfall runoff control system to avoid rainfall surges to the sewers.
This shows the “stonework” around the foundation and the front entrance.
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I read a lot of criticisms that Ottawa condos are too bland, products of inferior architects. This infill condo is not bland: round corner, multiple setbacks, brick & metal and “stone”, huge variety of unit sizes and layouts. It would be sorta nice to know what we should aspire to so if readers could send in pic of what a good infill condo apt bldg should look like I’ll post a collection of them … and send in your suggestions for the blandest infill condos (here in Ottawa) and I’ll feature them too.
Very nice!
I was visiting with my elderly neighbourbours the other day, and they were telling me about their old friend who owns the house (in quite rough shape) beside Z6. Apparently the z6 people offered him significant money to sell his house, but that he wanted to keep his little old house over any amount of money. I thought it was kind of charming, though the man’s kids were apparently very unhappy 🙂
There should be more like this in Ottawa, and especially the Chinatown/Booth St. area. I believe there’s a couple of derelict lots kiddie-corner to this development that are begging for redevelopment (but I wish developers could go up to 5 stories with wooden construction). What I’d like to know is the reason for the painfully slow construction timeline on this project – had it been 2 years spend building a 4-storey building? Towers have risen elsewhere over that time span. It seemed like they only worked on it a few days a month…
The developer for z6 did originally plan for 5 storeys (I don’t recall offhand if they got approval) but I believe they revised to 4 after not as many units sold as they had wished.
CCOC’s 5-storey townhouse/apartment building on Arlington in the Beaver Barracks development is woodframe construction. Between the planning (I.e. Funding) stage and construction stage, the building code/earthquake reqs for woodframe construction became much more stringent, and CCOC said they wouldn’t have done it the same way if the newer code were there from the start.
I heard the foundations were delayed because the contractor had a liability issue with a previous job and had to repair it pronto. I suspect the developer is going slowly because he wants to sell more units, although their web site shows quite a few sold. Unfortunately, the slow build-out will also discourage some sales … Sales will pick up when the exterior is finished and people can see what they might get. Sales are also discouraged by the disrepair of some lots on Booth, esp. the Chados/Eddey car repair depot, although now that it is abandonned it may look better than when it was being misused by the owners. The City is also complicit in insisting that all that through traffic on the street is just locals using Booth to get to major roads … the city consistently and for decades facilitates more and more traffic on Booth and cares not about its impact on the neighborhood.
t would be sorta nice to know what we should aspire to so if readers could send in pic of what a good infill condo apt bldg should look like I’ll post a collection of them
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They should look like the classic old grand-lady apartment buildings that already dot the landscape: the Strathcona, the Duncannon, Ambassador Court, the Metcalfe, the Shefford.
And no @)&^%(#^ setbacks.
A condo owner (and blog reader) tells me the first residents move into the Z6 in April, 2011.
The little parking lot next to the shawarma place on Preston should grow one of these buildings, only a storey taller. The narrow lot next to the Heart & Crown (fire last year) should grow a Norman-infill-type building, but with ground-level retail. It would do a lot for the street. Nothing worse than an empty lot every block. I wonder where Princiotta plans to build next in the area following the completion of Z6?