Quote:
Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
At least there's no parking lot in front of it like across the street.
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I'm curious, do you live in an apartment building and/or ever take your car to buy groceries?
When we were looking for an apartment building to downsize to, convenient parking for visitors was on our list of 'must-haves' because we wanted to be able to entertain and have people want to come to our home, not have to circle blocks aimlessly trying to find street parking. Since then, I've learned that same visitor parking makes age-in-place much easier since our building has a shortage of visiting nurses, and housecleaners. Thus, these support people have to come here and park.
As well, when I go grocery shopping for a major load of food (for instance, picking up our Christmas Dinner box from Farm Boy) I take my car instead of my backpack. During the first months/year of the pandemic, the recommendation was to only grocery shop once a week, so we did that by car since we couldn't carry our groceries for a week on our backs. We still have not returned to our old life of picking up things every day or two while on our daily constitutional and only taking the car for groceries once a month to pick up heavy stuff, frozen stuff (in summer) and Costco runs. I'm not sure we'll regain that healthy habit but time will tell, check back with me in 3 months when health restrictions on walking and carrying are over.
Yes, there's parking underground that is free for Farm Boy patrons (and I've used it twice during snowstorms) but to encourage
useful retail to rent the space in the bottom of all these apartment buildings you have to offer enough customers that the retailer can sustain the costs and, at least in the case of Farm Boy, the inconvenience of managing deliveries in a tight space. The only way to do that is to offer
some parking in front and a place for trucks to deliver stock and pick up waste.
The amount of parking you are dissing is not like at the Superstore, but well suits those who are driving by on their way home so they can pop in and pick up a few items.
It also suits the aging demographic with mobility issues; you know the ones who can actually afford the rent at nice buildings in Westboro, and are proactively downsizing to live close to the LRT and cheaper taxis to the hospital once they can't drive any more.
I despair when I see all these buildings going up with only 1 or 2 visitor parking spots or none. Let's be real, we want people to age in place but there is nowhere for their support people to park. There is nowhere for friends to park so isolation happens. And for those younger people who live in these TOD buildings because they are choosing to live car-free, there is nowhere to park a rental or Communauto car to load/unload it when heading out on a weekend camping trip or coming back from IKEA with furniture to assemble.
If you want people to choose to live in dense housing, you have to make it fit with lifestyles and even those who live car-free need to have access to occasional parking at their residence and useful retail at ground-level both in their building and nearby buildings.
We do not have the density of Manhattan, so we need to support businesses in order to encourage patrons to come or you will end up with Scott Street becoming a retail repeat of the Canyon on Richmond at Island Park. Ottawa's culture defines that support as a few parking spots in front. Not suburban parking spots, but ground-level 10 - 20 spots to support a grocery store. (Farmboy/Daycare/Bridgehead/Gym/Credit Union share 34 spaces, plus 1960 Scott has ~20 more spaces; in comparison, there are 50 spaces at the Metro, which feels like it is a much smaller store than the Farm Boy.)
Even with the parking, there's still only one (questionably useful) retailer in 1960 Scott unless something else completely unremarkable moved in since the last time I walked by.
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