To be brutally honest*, I can provide some concrete* recent examples of good urban lowrise stuff in downtown Victoria. Let's not be so defeatist** in our attitude. The Union in Chinatown and the Customs House, for example. The Pearl on Store Street, too. And in the "woulda been great" file we have the final concepts for Northern Junk and 1030 Fort Street. Sovereign on Broughton doesn't thrill me but as an infill junior highrise goes I'd say it works. As a one-off I can also appreciate Ironworks, as long as it stands out as the lone example of going all-in with the rust cladding.

*brutalism
**France

Good examples of brutalism include the UVic MacLaurin and Petch buildings, the Cadboro Commons, Craigdarroch and Cadboro residences, and of course the Saanich Municipal hall

Good luck seeing the Cadboro Commons.

You'd think this Government Street hotel site would represent a prime opportunity to showcase everything that we've learned.

But nope, we're feeling "conflicted" because we really want to regress back to the blandscraper era.

Daily Colonist
September 30, 1973

Old Town Area Restored

Historic Lower Yates Now Has a New Look

Adrian Greenbank is one of the men who took a chance on investing money in restoring old buildings, rather than tearing them down...

...Greenbank bought a warehouse at 535 Yates.

"We ripped out most of the interior, dug the main floor 18 inches deeper so we could put in a mezzanine floor, and then rebuilt the interior completely,"

Highrises, Greenbank added, don't have to be inhuman and ugly. They can be blended in with any other architecture.

He blamed architects for not living up to their obligations. A good example, Greenbank said, was the city parking garage, next to his building.

The unimaginative concrete structure painted in a dull red, he said, could be "dressed up" to fit in with the new spirit of the 500 Block Yates, but that would cost money which neither the city, nor merchants were willing to invest.

--

May 8, 2025

...“conflicted” was the key word used by many city councillors leading up to the decision, which butted against city staff recommendations.

After a lengthy discussion on the proposed construction of a 12-storey hotel in historic Old Town, Victoria’s mayor and council neither approved nor declined the developer’s application to build, but instead agreed to send staff back to the developer with a list of questions and considerations, all the while, hoping the list wasn’t so lengthy it deterred the applicant from moving forward. (aastra says: does anybody remember the Northern Junk saga? Anyone?)

I suspect nobody is moving forward with hotel plans right now.