A proposal to build a highrise residential tower proposed in Oliver was voted down by Edmonton city councillors on Wednesday evening.
The developer had wanted a condo tower that would have been up to 30-storeys tall at 99 Avenue and 111 Street and submitted an application to get zoning approved for the project.
The city’s sustainable development department had expressed concerns about the design of the building, which would have been directly next to a four-storey apartment building. Councillors agreed with the department about the concerns.
“Very rarely do we have infill that is perfect and everyone’s happy and every community person is happy and the administration is fully happy,” Simon O’Byrne, vice-president of Stantec said Wednesday evening.
“The proposed development is extremely out of character for the neighbourhood,” Oliver Community League president Lisa Brown said about the project on Sunday. “It just doesn’t respect the immediate buildings around it.”
Watch below: On June 25, 2017, Julia Wong filed this report about a proposed highrise tower for Oliver.
Coun. Scott McKeen also expressed concerns about the development over the weekend.
“We’re putting a lot of people on not that much space and then the distance between the proposed tower and the four storey apartment building next door is not very much,” he said.
READ MORE: Concerns over proposed 30-storey condo near downtown Edmonton
“Infill is never black and white,” O’Byrne said Wednesday night. “It’s always grey and you have to zoom out sometimes to 10,000 feet and say what’s in the best interests of the city.”
-with files from Julia Wong