[Halifax] Barrington Espace | ? m | 5 fl | Completed

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

On top of that there aren't many large, modern storefronts to attract anything other than small-scale boutique retailers. In a couple of years this will change. It's just too bad that rebuilding the street took 5 or 10 years instead of 2 or 3 years.

Gauging the size of succesful urban storefronts is tough. Small storefronts, I'd say, are better suited to the street than large ones. They create a more fine-grained scale and allow for a greater diversity of small retailers. Really successful and popular retail areas (Toronto's Queen West, or Ottawa's Byward Market) are full of narrow, old-style storefronts, and restaurants, bars, and shops just squeeze into the narrow spaces.

It seems that when developments in urban areas involve big, broad storefronts, they're less successful, or are filled with big chain pharmacies and banks (most condo podiums are ample evidence of that). There's a five-block long stretch of Toronto's Beaches neighbourhood that was built all-new a few years ago, and it's persistently vacant because the storefronts are too big and costly for most retailers. It's killed an entire portion of that neighbourhood. Halifax has actually been good at building smaller-scale storefronts on new developments, maybe because the buildings themselves tend to be smaller than in larger cities.

I think you're on to something though, in that there are a lot of big stretches of the street that are out of commission (Roy and Espace) which really kills the buzz on the street. And of course there are the buildings that haven't yet seen good restoration work (Green Lantern, especially). Once some of the planned residential projects are built and a couple thousand more people are living around here, it'll be a whole different story. Hopefully that'll spur the owners of the still-rundown properties to spiff them up, a la the Brander-Morris Building and the Freemason's Hall.

[someone123]

I am not advocating a bunch of large storefronts, but it might be better to have a mix of mostly small storefronts with a couple of larger ones suitable for a different type of tenant. An example of a larger storefront would be something like the Shoppers location on SGR, the Discovery Centre, or the Roy Building.

Here's an illustration of some of the reasons why I think the street is struggling:



The green lines are the only actual storefronts along the main stretch of Barrington, and the black areas are vacant lots or vacant buildings (note that there are a bunch of other sites like the Metropark, Grand Parade, or Metro Centre that are in this category at least sometimes).

Barrington is only 50% or less retail and perhaps 1/3 of neighbouring blocks are empty right now. The new developments happening will change the story dramatically but for now this is the situation.

[alps]

I've never figured out what's going on within the ground floor J.W. Johnston provincial building on the corner of Prince and Barrington. Is it office space? The windows are huge and it'd make a great storefront!

By the way, does anyone know where Shoppers used to be located on Barrington? I used to work at a different location and in older documents there'd be reference to the Barrington store -- I assume it moved to SGR sometime in the 90s.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by alps

I've never figured out what's going on within the ground floor J.W. Johnston provincial building on the corner of Prince and Barrington. Is it office space? The windows are huge and it'd make a great storefront!

By the way, does anyone know where Shoppers used to be located on Barrington? I used to work at a different location and in older documents there'd be reference to the Barrington store -- I assume it moved to SGR sometime in the 90s.

Shoppers was located in the Roy Building.

The ground floor of the J. W. Johnston building is indeed just provincial offices. It's a big wasted opportunity and people complained back when the space was first converted around 10 years ago. I don't think the province wants to be a commercial landlord and they apparently don't need storefront type space in that location. It's too bad, and it makes me worry about what they might do if they develop the lot at Barrington and George. A bland mid-sized government office building would be only marginally better than the parking lot that's there right now.

[alps]

Thanks. I remember the renovation but never knew it was actually a storefront at one point. Would be a fairly easy yet significant improvement to Barrington if they were to let it out...

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by alps

Thanks. I remember the renovation but never knew it was actually a storefront at one point. Would be a fairly easy yet significant improvement to Barrington if they were to let it out...

Of course, it originally was built as a storefront. That was the home of Eaton's until they moved to the Halifax Shopping Center in '63 or so.

[Haliguy]

Notice they were working on this late into the last night. Guess their getting a bit more agressive on this finally.

[fenwick16]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Of course, it originally was built as a storefront. That was the home of Eaton's until they moved to the Halifax Shopping Center in '63 or so.

Very interesting. I didn't know that Eaton's was located downtown prior to 1963.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by fenwick16

Very interesting. I didn't know that Eaton's was located downtown prior to 1963.

Until the govt renovated the building a dozen or so years ago there were still remnants of the Eaton ownership. Some custom brass castings for door push plates, etc.

Up the street, the Discovery Center used to be Zellers.

[ILoveHalifax]

I used to have business on Granville St and I believe the Eaton's building was the Johnson building when I as there. I left town in '87. Time flies. I remember seeing Santa in that Eaton`s store, just a very small child.

[beyeas]

Originally Posted by fenwick16

Very interesting. I didn't know that Eaton's was located downtown prior to 1963.

The street level windows in that first picture remind me a lot of Bloomingdales
Cool to see. Thanks.

[OldDartmouthMark]

[alps]

Thanks for the old pics! I didn't know it was Eaton's either. Actually, for some reason I thought the renovation a few years back was a more drastic change to the ground level.

[coolmillion]

I ran into a friend who is "in the know" about Espace and he hinted that Starfish has in mind a tenant for the ground floor retail. He said "it would be big for downtown." Not confirmed and far off an announcement, but hopeful nonetheless.

[haligonia]

Originally Posted by coolmillion

I ran into a friend who is "in the know" about Espace and he hinted that Starfish has in mind a tenant for the ground floor retail. He said "it would be big for downtown." Not confirmed and far off an announcement, but hopeful nonetheless.

I've heard things like this as well. It would be great for Barrington to have a major retail tenant to draw people to that part of downtown.

[SekishikiMeikaiHa]

Update:

[fenwick16]

I wonder how long the "random panels look" will be around. I think this random pattern on the upper 2 levels will make it looked dated within 10 years time (in my opinion it already looks dated - what's wrong with a regular pattern ).

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by fenwick16

I wonder how long the "random panels look" will be around. I think this random pattern on the upper 2 levels will make it looked dated within 10 years time (in my opinion it already looks dated - what's wrong with a regular pattern ).

I noticed quite a few like that in Toronto but I can't think of many in Halifax. The new Coast Guard building is kind of like this but has a regular pattern. I think the new Blood Services building might have some sort of random pattern but those are basically the only ones I can think of. I think it looks good in this particular instance but I hope that we don't see this become a trend because then it would definitely start to look dated soon.

The bluish tinted glass looks kind of weird but might make more sense once the windows on the bottom floors are in?

[someone123]

The buildings look so messy right now that it's hard to judge what the final product will look like. I have a feeling that windows in the lower buildings will make a huge difference.

Same thing goes for Waterside and TD.

Here's what Founders Square was like during construction:



Gallery: http://www.facebook.com/pages/RBC-Wa...=photos_stream

[eastcoastal]

Originally Posted by fenwick16

I wonder how long the "random panels look" will be around. I think this random pattern on the upper 2 levels will make it looked dated within 10 years time (in my opinion it already looks dated - what's wrong with a regular pattern ).

It does look a little odd here. Sometimes, I think this can be ok, but there's really not much glazing in the overall composition here which, in my opinion, makes it feel more cluttered than interesting or well considered. NSCC's waterfront campus building has a random window pattern... or maybe it's a pattern... I can't remember. In any case, the building is large enough that significant variation between glazing panels doesn't really bother me.

All the same, I bet NSCC will look dated in a few years too.

I would say that, in most cases, the simpler the glazing pattern, the better.