It’s hard to miss, no matter which way you are approaching Barrie’s downtown.
You can see it driving south on Bayfield Street while still north of Cundles Road. It looms ahead when you cross the Dunlop Street overpass over Highway 400. You can even spot it while driving down Bayview Drive near Park Place.
It, of course, is the Debut condominium building now under construction on Dunlop Street West, between Maple and Mary.
That development became Barrie’s tallest building some months ago when it surpassed 17 storeys. It is now well beyond 20 storeys and still has a ways to go to reach its full 32-storey height.
Right now, the tower stands out in the skyline, especially if you are looking across the bay from the Southshore Centre. It will be twice the height of any other building in Barrie.
Not for long, however.
Foundation work is already underway for the twin Debut condominium tower, which will also be 32 storeys. Across from the downtown library, similar foundation work has begun on a 20-storey building.
And a search through the city’s official development page indicates there is much, much more to come.
The Debut Condos aren’t even likely to hold Barrie's tallest-building crown for long. There are 41- and 40-storey buildings in various stages of the approval process, plus more than 10 buildings of at least 30 storeys. Even council itself, when putting city-owned land beside the downtown library on the market, said it was looking for proposals for two 33-storey buildings.
There are at least 22 buildings of between 20 and 30 storeys in the works in Barrie, plus a similar number for buildings between 10 and 20 storeys.
Almost all of the proposed buildings over 20 storeys are planned for either what is designated as the city centre or the former Barrie fairgrounds property on Essa Road.
The vast majority of the tall buildings under 20 storeys proposed outside the city centre are on major intensification corridors, especially Yonge Street and Essa Road.
There’s a good chance some — or even many — of these buildings will never see the light of day. A few of them have been on the books for close to a decade.
Others, such as the HIP Development plan for the former Barrie Central Collegiate site, are in flux with new plans possibly coming forward.
And who knows what is happening with the massive SmartCentres/Greenwin plan for the land between Lakeshore Drive and Bradford Street...?
But there will undoubtedly be other proposals that surface, such as recently unveiled plans for a 20-storey building on a long-vacant lot on Bradford Street and a 25-storey structure at the corner of Dunlop and Mulcaster.
Some people will not be happy. There is a segment of Barrie’s population that, for whatever reason, has a strong dislike – I’d even say hatred – of tall buildings.
During my years on Barrie city council, I heard from many of them, through phone calls, emails and remarks at public planning meetings.
Not because the buildings were proposed for their neighbourhood, where I could understand concerns about shadows or traffic. They just hated the sight of tall buildings and, if they were condos, that just doubled the animosity for reasons I was never able to fathom.
But, like them or not, at a time when there is a serious shortage of all forms of housing, tall buildings are here to stay.
Barry Ward is a veteran editor and journalist who also served on Barrie city council for 22 years. His column appears regularly on BarrieToday.
