Quote:
Originally Posted by Vin
Again I already said before it's all due to extremely bad planning at OV. Big grocery stores should be located closer to the train stations. If that were so, the market can even grab customers who don't live in OV, as those who are passing through can conveniently do their shopping. That would've increased its customer base tremendously. Also, there is no retail continuity from the skytrain station to the OV retail plaza. The Creek is a lost opportunity to provide that. Alas, if there were office buildings and hotels built in OV, Urban Fare could could've done way better in its food and beverage department, with tourists and office workers needing the services provided by the market in the day time hours.
See how T&T is doing so well by the Stadium station. I do realize that it's not as high end as UF, but by being located in between a retail complex/mall, movie theatre and the station, with lots of shops, services, restaurants and cafes nearby, the retail scene there is a lot superior than what OV has to offer. Same reasoning goes for Wholefoods and Save on at Cambie and West Broadway.
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I appreciate that no amount of logic or explanation will divert your obsession with having more retail and commercial everywhere - especially in the Olympic Village.
Maybe it's worth repeating that nobody is preventing anybody proposing more retail or office or a hotel in Southeast False Creek. That's why the new MEC store is currently under construction on a site that also permitted a residential building. It was a surprise, but it was permitted. There's an intention that Main Street should have retail, and that's been built, although some hasn't been occupied in several years (under Central, for example), and some has failed already (the coffee shop). Forcing developers to add even more retail on Yukon Street, which you seem to want, would probably result in even more vacant units.
There are many more retail units being added along Main between West 2nd Avenue and West 7th, and it's not clear there's demand to fill all of those, so requiring even more elsewhere seems counter productive.
Developers have considered office schemes in SEFC, although I'm not sure anyone has mentioned a hotel there yet. While we have continued residential demand, those are the type of projects that are more likely to go ahead. There's a lot of new office space being built a very short walk away in the Mount Pleasant Industrial area south of West 2nd. The higher density office projects just to the west of Main Street in that area should help make the new retail viable.
If there's going to be another food store in the area, you're correct that bit should be near the station. That would suggest the site across the street from the station is the logical place, and there should be a significant office component as well. If VanCity wanted more space, that would be an ideal situation, as they're already on top of the station. There's already a significant office proposed nearby at
1296 Station Street, and that should help clarify if there's demand for office space near the station.
The one thing I'm surprised we haven't seen proposed is more mid market modern hotels. There are Sleep Inn and Comfort Inn examples in less expensive locations of Brooklyn that look as if they're also fairly inexpensive to build. They would seem to be ideal to fill a niche in Vancouver, if the land values don't price them out. I suspect the explosive growth of AirB&B is the reason why we've seen the city's more modest hotels closing and few replacements, but that might change if the City are able to limit rentals to 30 days minimum. It'll be interesting to see what the new Onni hotel in False Creek Flats is branded, assuming they can line up an operator. The industrial zones don't allow hotel uses, but the C-zones do, and until the current inquiry to rebuild the Park Inn on West Broadway there really hasn't been anything proposed.
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