Quote:
Originally Posted by trueviking
Pretty sure their decision to stay was business related, not philanthropic or because of some community spirit.
The time has come for us to stop accepting all development as good development. They could have been told, re-design to fit the rules, but why would any developer do that when they know they can just say, i'll move to IKEA and the politicians will just ignore any plan.
Its just bizarre to me that Earl's got shut down and every other urban parking lot builder is welcomed with open arms....its so inconsistent.
Its the piece by piece degradation of the city that has led us to where we are. It doesn't seem like a big deal to allow one building to be a strip mall, but once all the little deals are added up we get the big deal that is Winnipeg's urban condition today. A plan has been made for the area. The owners knew it long before they started to design their new building. Why did they just ignore it? If you consider all these projects in isolation, you lose perspective on the cumulative effect. That's the whole point of making a neighbourhood plan.
such short term thinking as always.
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Interestingly enough, one of the reasons given by Independent Jewelers (on record in the report, no less) was that there wasn't any consultation and they didn't know about the plan or they would have objected at the time. You'll have to ask Susan Russell as to the veracity of that claim.
I just bring this back to my old saw that development (and its effects) has very little do to with planning and nearly everything to do with the economics of a particular area. We try to engineer neighbourhoods using the best intentions and lessons learned from other communities, but we ignore the underlying conditions. I actually agree with your point that this was a business decision because the land is already paid for and they can own the location. But that's about where it ends. By the time you factor in customer losses the inconvenience and general dereliction of the area bring, it's probably pretty close to a wash. If the city truly wanted to play hardball with them, they'd move. And that would be their right. But they'd also leave a large vacancy in their wake and it would be years before anything worthwhile would fill it. So we'd have the right plan, but we wouldn't have the right results. There simply isn't enough commerce in this city to fill all of this space.
We have to be realistic about this area. That store has stood there for like 70 years. It's not exactly the lynchpin holding together the community. There's virtually nothing of any consequence to the east or west of it. South of it is one of the roughest areas in the city, and North of it is even worse until you hit the bridge. At which point you're definitively in the worst area in the city. There isn't exactly a ton of investment on the way making either Notre Dame or Isabel the sort of quaint pedestrian corridor that buildings up to the sidewalk help ensure. There's more likely to be a complete decline of the existing building stock before there's a renewal. Anything new is helpful even if it's somewhat lacking.
I just think we need to pick and choose where we decide to get uppity about development in this city because alot of the city doesn't really have that luxury.
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