I am very disappointed that St. John’s city council has decided once again to show contempt for its own zoning regulations and the people of St. John’s by allowing an apartment building to be constructed in Churchill Square that is not needed nor wanted, particularly by a builder, KMK Properties, that is in the midst of suing the city for $7.2 million over a development the city put a stop to at 154 New Cove Rd.
I attended the public meeting on July 3 which was attended by more than 100 area residents to discuss the apartment building, where dozens spoke against this project and only a single person was in support.
I find it repugnant for the city to either donate or sell municipal parking spaces to any private developer, who could easily install more underground parking — at his own cost, of course.
No area resident supported a building higher than the 15 metres allowed, though the general consensus seemed to me that people were fine with something that was within the city’s existing regulations. The proposed building will tower over everything else and unbalance the shape of the square which was architecturally designed in the 1950s.
St. John’s already has too many rental units with the vacancy rate in the city over seven per cent and growing (and no, I’m not a landlord, but I pity those who are). I believe there are a number of vacancies in the apartments already lining the square.
I find it repugnant for the city to either donate or sell municipal parking spaces to any private developer, who could easily install more underground parking — at his own cost, of course. I recall the fight the city lost in 2015 trying to reclaim parking spaces from the Supreme Court on Duckworth Street. The city will rue giving up these spaces, too. In its blinkered thinking, the city also proposes to put meters on all remaining spaces the developer considers worthless.
The six-storey building will block the transmissions of some of the cell towers on the nearby Bell Aliant, meaning the cell towers likely will now go on top of the proposed apartment building, making it many metres higher.
Everyone wants the old Dominion Store space filled with something. The developer won’t say what’s going to be on the ground floor but most people at the public meeting believe that Shoppers Drug Mart will be moving from the south side of the square to this location, leaving the existing Shoppers Drug space as the newest ugly vacant storefront; hardly a reasonable trade-off for building a hulking, disproportionate structure for which there is no demand.
Giles Penney,
St. John’s
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