1570 Main Street West | ? | 12 fl | Proposed

[ScreamingViking]

I think this part of the thread is confusing a market for shops and services with a market for "heritage" buildings.

To say that there are no businesses to go in these buildings or on the street once they're constructed and home to hundreds more people goes against decades of evidence in economic geography. If the existing ones are not in great shape now, new business owners will clean them up and use them if they feel they can make money once open.

If Main West simply ends up being vertical "sprawl" where cars by far remain the dominant mode and access to commercial streets is poor (like the apartment buildings east of Centennial), then fewer businesses will have a market to serve as residents end up driving elsewhere instead. Make it more pedestrian-friendly, and use the LRT or whatever transit improvements are made to full effect, and the retail landscape will change too.

This is the balance the city must get right, to support its intensification aspirations and avoid spreading itself outward to a great degree.