Renderings and floor plans of the three towers of the under-construction GloveBox project on Victoria Street South.“More development [now] is taking place within the existing urban footprint of Kitchener-Waterloo than out on the periphery,” says associate professor Brian Doucet, Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Social Inclusion at the University of Waterloo. “That to me is a sign that the [growth-management] objective is working.
“The Ion was the icing on the cake,” Mr. Zehr says. “But it is not the sole reason for what has happened in Waterloo Region.” For a successful downtown, he adds, “you need pillows and beds, and that has happened. After the beds, there is also the office [space].” Once completed, the GloveBox and surrounding condos will be home to about 1,000 residents and 800 employees.
“It is the millennials who work in these tech companies, who live in the downtown, and they are the ridership for the LRT,” Mr. Whitney says. For example, the developers have set aside 525 shared parking spaces for GloveBox company employees and condo owners.