Quote:
Originally Posted by eastcanman
Long-time reader, first-time poster here.
I'm happy to see the city at least proposing to taking steps to convert Main Street in to a proper urban node, but I can't imagine that the final result will come anything close to that. I hate to be pessimistic, but the way the Union Street plan has been panning out doesn't give me much hope for the very similar, and perhaps even more ambitious, Main Street plan.
I was really excited for the Union Street plan when it came out years back, but it seems to have completely come off the rails in its implementation since then. The Union/Cliffe and Union/St. Mary's bridge access corners were golden opportunities to build new, urban focal points on freed-up land as a result of the demolition that was necessary to reconfigure those intersections. Unfortunately, thus far, that golden opportunity has been squandered on building vinyl-clad highway-commercial shacks with street-facing parking lots. Nothing says "focal point of an up-and-coming urban community" quite like a used car dealership, right?
As for the rest of the Union St. neighbourhood, despite all of the new townhouse and condo developments that have gone up in the past few years, there are actually MORE street-facing parking lots on Union than there were when the plan started. It almost seems that the Union Street plan has become a "Potemkin Village" project where new development is constructed with an eye toward looking good when viewed from the south side of the river, while largely neglecting the improvement of the neighbourhood fabric of Union Street and Devon itself. I really WANT to see the project succeed and see Devon have a vibrant and desirable core area, but that's not the direction things seem to be heading based on the development so far.
As for the Main Street plan, I can't help but notice that the "interim phase" of the plan seems to call for replacing a lot of the low-rent strip malls and car-oriented commercial developments with... more strip-malls and car-oriented commercial developments. I understand that you can't build up an urban node overnight, but chasing out the small local businesses that occupy many of these low-rent commercial properties and replacing then with some sort of "Corbett Centre Lite," near-the-road-but-oriented-toward-a-parking-lot, tree-lined mallburbia would probably just guarantee that the area remains suburban and mall-oriented for another few decades.
I really WANT to be excited for this plan, I really do, but I think I'm better off hanging my hopes for positive urban development on the continuing infill of downtown and leave Main and Union plans in the "will be pleasantly surprised if they turn out well but not holding my breath" pile.
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Welcome to the forum.
The Union Street area has some real potential and the plan is good but like you said the actual implementation is pretty far off the mark. However, it needs to be noted that there have really only been two new projects on Union Street since that plan was released - but both were screwed up:
- The mixed-use building on the corner of St. Mary's and Union should have been right up against the street with parking behind but I believe the developer got a variance. This building could have set a precedence but the city allowed the developer to have his way. Too bad.
- The condo building across from the bottom of Neill Street was supposed to have also had a townhouse component. There were supposed to be something like 8-9 units fronting on Union Street. This was a great opportunity to add some housing that could have fit in nicely with the surrounding neighborhood but local residents complained about the traffic implications for the development as a whole and removing the townhouse component was a compromise. Now we have a condo building set back from the road with parking in front. Ugh. A squandered opportunity.
I think there's two main issues at stake here:
1. Traffic. Both Union and Main are essentially arterial roads that connect the entirety of the northside. Any significant developments along that stretch will have people concerned about increased traffic. I think that if we want these areas properly urbanized, we need the following to happen:
- Complete the Two Nations Crossing overpass and ramps
- Connect Two Nations Crossing with Route 8
- Build a third bridge connecting Clements Drive with Woodstock Road
- Go ahead with the plan to remove the ramps from the Westmorland Street Bridge
This will create a quasi ring road around the entire city and shift thru traffic out of downtown, off of the Westmorland bridge, and off of Main and Union. Obviously, this is a very long term plan but I think it's essential if we want to urbanize and densify Fredericton's core neighborhoods.
2. Developers. I'm not sure there are any local developers who have truly bought into this type of thinking (new urbanism, smart growth, walkability, etc). Developers in Fredericton are risk adverse and we've seen very little innovation or forward thinking from them. We need someone to buy into these plans and prove that they can work. I'm not sure how we can achieve this but perhaps the city could put some incentives in place.
I think that the Devon neighborhood in particular as a lot of potential. Devon is poised to accommodate people who want to live in an urban neighborhood but are being priced out of living downtown. If someone could build a good mixed-use building, say on the empty lot between Hayes and Cliffe, it could spur more of the same.
As for Main Street, it doesn't look like the interim plan is more strip malls. It's a bit hard to tell from the overhead concept drawings but I assume the interim development would be multistory street facing mixed used buildings.
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