My family lives on Albert Street. For the last five years I have spent countless hours trying to get Northdale rezoned.

There are two visions for intensification. The first is a student precinct. The student population prefers to live in one and two bedroom apartments close to the University. The City allowed developers to build 5 bedroom units. Why not rezone parts of Northdale to MR, build more apartments, condos and three story brownstones for students. Make it a green community with local services like coffee shops, dentists, restaurants and a grocery store. It will limit the need for cars and would house students in safe accomodations. Right now Northdale is full of unlicensed houses that are packed to the gills with students. Don’t you think students deserve better than run down houses that may or may not be safe?

What is here now was designed for single family occupency not students. And for a variety of reasons single families are not happy here. Why not build something that is accually designed for the students that do want to live in the neighbourhood.

The second option is a diverse and intensified community- some sort of MR zoning (apartments and condos) mixed with three story brownstones… This community would be roughly 50% students and 50% non students. It would be a youthful community with a wide variety of housing options- but again not five bedroom apartments- one and two bedrooms units. Services for the neighbourhood could be added to the ground floors of the buildings.

Just to be 100% clear- there would be significantly more student housing in Northdale with either option. I am talking about a seriously intensified neighbourhood close to many area attractions, jobs and the universities.

What is here doesn’t make sense. Something better needs to be built.

Christine

HUG needs better spokespeople.

To address the rowdiness issue: yes, most student renters are good neighbors. However, anyone who’s been a student in KW is well aware that people looking for optimally-located “party houses” often look for properties close to the universities or within stumbling distance from bars. So, unfortunately, Northdale is well-suited to the students most likely to be the worst neighbors. A good way to discourage these types of students from living in Northdale is to create mid-market high-density developments with — here’s the key point — low bedroom counts. This also makes the neighborhood more attractive to other demographics that would highly value its location and amenities.

Darcy, the people who are calling for a change in Northdale’s zoning are the same people who want to live there, just not in its current housing stock. It’s great that Ellen managed to find a house that works for her needs, but that doesn’t undermine the fact that Northdale doesn’t have the right properties for many people who fit her demographic.

We’re not talking about mathematical theorems here. It isn’t a contradiction that Ellen — and some others, I’m sure — thinks the neighbourhood is fine. Any worthwhile generality has some exceptions. The contention you’d need to make is that Ellen’s is the general experience for live-in property owners in Northdale, and I think you’d have a hard time with that claim. Though I’m not placing much weight on how much I (or others) personally like/dislike the neighbourhood — what matters is the empirical preference and the manifestations thereof. And more importantly, I simply do not think the zoning there makes for good urban planning today.

What speculation, and what faulty information? Anyway, I think you are seriously misunderstanding the proposal and how it would work — specifically, how it would affect property owners and developers. I’d be glad to meet with you to discuss this — tomorrow afternoon, perhaps?

Regarding housing markets and the rest, I’ll respond to the linked post separately.

Ellen (full disclosure: I’m her s/o) is a full-time resident in Northdale who wants to live there. Ellen’s next door neighbours are young professionals who want to live there. We think the house across the street was bought by a young family (with kids!) although she hasn’t actually met them yet and don’t know for sure if they’re not just hanging around to fix the place up and fill with students. Her part of the neighbourhood (a) isn’t that bad and (b) seems to be getting better.

The map that keeps getting printed in the Chronicle is wrong. The picture the HUG Waterloo people are painting is demonstrably false, and Ellen is the counter-example. The media coverage has been irresponsible and misleading.

You’re speculating based on faulty information. She’s telling you about the actual situation as she sees it.

I would love to see Northdale become a vibrant, high-density urban neighbourhood, but I don’t think the market can bear it. I could go on, but I’ve written a whole blog post about it, so I won’t belabour it here. See http://waterloowellingtonblogs.org/2010/01/hug-waterloo.shtml

I’d love to talk to you personally about this. I’m sure Ellen would to. This whole thing bugs me in an irrate blogger sort of way, but it’s personally important for her. I don’t think we should be basing our urban planning decisions for a neighbourhood based on the wishes of people who don’t want to live there.

The city’s own reports show that the few live-in property owners left have been living there for 30+ years, with almost no one living there for a medium length of time (e.g. 5 to 20 years). Of course there are exceptions, but that doesn’t change the overall picture of the neighbourhood, which is of a place that families have been leaving and students have been cramming into.

Anyway, I support the urbanization of Northdale for reasons completely unrelated to the property values of land there. It’s a suburban, low-density area in what would be an ideal location for good quality urban development. Waterloo approves sprawl on the edge of the city without allowing the creation of residential units within walking distance of UW, WLU, RIM, and Uptown — as Northdale is.

I actually spent a really long time myself looking for a one-bedroom apartment near UW and Uptown — and good ones pretty much don’t exist in Waterloo. See here: http://news.therecord.com/Business/article/647772 It’s absurd that car-oriented sprawl is okay, but prime real estate in a place where people already do walk and cycle to work and school is forced to remain post-war single family residential. Northdale is an amazing location, but its built form completely fails to take advantage of that.

We had one such house up the street from us. The sound of breaking glass and speeding cars became quite common at 3AM.

But, and this is the important thing, Waterloo cops are pretty good at breaking these up after a few complaints.