Quote:
Originally Posted by Drybrain
If they ended up here, I think it'd be HUGE for the street.
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It would be positive, but on a related note I think the preoccupation with attracting retail has hurt the downtown area in the past. The decline of downtown retail is a symptom of other root problems that can be mitigated or solved by doing things like building a better transit system and adding residential units. A lot of effort has gone into trying to recruit retailers (mostly chains with little attachment to the city) or window dressing (e.g. those penis-shaped poster poles, cheap and easy to implement to make it look like something is being done) but those strategies were ultimately ineffective. Meanwhile there are some homegrown businesses like Freak Lunchbox that have stuck.
At the extreme end, there were a number of US cities that paid millions of dollars in subsidies for big department stores to set up downtown. Eventually the subsidies ended and the businesses collapsed because they did not have a real market to serve. Cities like Toronto and Vancouver on the other hand have big downtown retailers because there are lots of downtown residents and because transit makes those locations central and easy to get to for a large number of people.