Architects have presented plans for a permanent supportive housing building at 250 Terminal Ave. they promise will present a “pleasant and happy” appearance to the neighbourhood.
The properties, currently occupied by Newcastle Place temporary supportive housing between Bryden and Mount Benson streets, are still in the re-zoning process to allow for permanent supportive housing and affordable housing complexes on the site. Caleb Horn, city planner, reported that council has given third reading to a re-zoning bylaw, but the bylaw has not yet been adopted.
Architects Ron Hart and Graham Case of Vancouver-based architectural design studio Ron Hart Architecture met with the City of Nanaimo’s design advisory panel Thursday, April 24, to review plans for a five-storey supportive housing building with 50 dwelling units, consisting of a mix of studio units, two of which will be accessible, and the remainder adaptable to various requirements.
The building will be situated at the corner of Terminal Avenue and Bryden Street at the southwest side of the property to try to distance it from neighbouring properties that include a law office at the corner of Bryden Street and Vancouver Avenue.
Horn noted the building design falls within the Newcastle and Brechin Neighbourhood Plan design guidelines and no variances were requested for the development permit.
“Our goals for this project, over and above housing 50 people, is to help the Newcastle neighbourhood sort of block the noise from Terminal Avenue, which is a big roadway; quite noisy,” Case said.
The fifth storey of the building is “stepped back” on its south and east side so it will present as a four-storey building to nearby residences. The resulting extra rooftop space allows for a patio.
An element of the building’s design all panel members approved of was the choice of exterior colours and textures. The ground floor is concrete that serves as a pedestal for the upper four storeys that will be wood-framed or composed of prefabricated modules.
“Part of the facade treatment is to minimize the compartmentalized look that a modular building might present,” Case said.
To further camouflage the modular look and brighten the overall appearance of the building, the architects are including pastel coloured powder-coated metal vertical “fins” that also serve to shade the structure’s windows.
“The choice of colours for the fins was, again, to be light and bright and to keep it pleasant and happy and really present it, as you come up Terminal Avenue – as it’s sort of the first thing you see as you come out of downtown, you come around a corner and you see this sort of box – and we wanted to limit, sort of, the boxiness and we wanted to create some texture there and texture through colour and texture through the three dimensionality of those fins,” Case said.
Plans also include a 10-space parking lot, a 2.7-metre cedar fence and 1.8-metre wide shrubbery landscape buffer.
“Part of the re-zoning was a five-metre road dedication, which narrowed our site a bit, but does create a much nicer sidewalk experience as people walk down Terminal Avenue,” Case said. “So, we’re trying to make that a bit more pleasant by adding trees, adding small trees and adding shrubs to try and make it more of a tree-lined walkway.”
City staff comments on the design recommended avoiding gating where possible along public frontages and considering a pedestrian access between the secured parking lot and sidewalk entry on Bryden Street. The design panel asked that lighting for the parking lot and walkway be designed to minimize off-site illumination and avoid use of metal lamp standards that might be damaged or graffiti-tagged.
