Dawn Sloane: Bring box stores downtown

[halifaxboyns]

Originally Posted by someone123

The downtown area also has a Staples (on Gottingen!) and Superstore. The Staples has underground parking. Either one could have been built with residential on top and a better overall design.

There are already a bunch of other retail developments in Halifax with underground or structured parking and residential on top. Examples are Park Lane, CCA (with Pete's), Spring Garden Place... Around Barrington office towers on top were more popular (Maritime Centre, Scotia Square -- these older designs had more problems unfortunately).

Soon there's a good chance we'll see a major NSLC location with residential (Clyde Street lot on Queen). And we'll still have people arguing over whether or not it's possible.

That is a very good point. But the point that I was trying to show with the Portland example in picking up from a point you made earlier was that if you combine good residential density, efficient high speed transit (LRT/streetcar) and then not focusing on cars (not requiring parking for commercial, but providing it on the first couple of floors near grade); you can really get some interesting mix of development.

What I found interesting about the drawings in the thread I posted earlier is the walmart design. Walmart has been really going at focusing on an urban format because of the negative play the big box format gets in major urban areas. Many big cities won't allow them - but they want into the market, so they are learning to 'play the game'. I suspect it won't be long until you see urban format walmarts popping up all over the US and Canada.

[beyeas]

Originally Posted by someone123

The downtown area also has a Staples (on Gottingen!) and Superstore. The Staples has underground parking. Either one could have been built with residential on top and a better overall design.

There are already a bunch of other retail developments in Halifax with underground or structured parking and residential on top. Examples are Park Lane, CCA (with Pete's), Spring Garden Place... Around Barrington office towers on top were more popular (Maritime Centre, Scotia Square -- these older designs had more problems unfortunately).

Soon there's a good chance we'll see a major NSLC location with residential (Clyde Street lot on Queen). And we'll still have people arguing over whether or not it's possible.

I agree... I don't see the CBD being a good place for this style of store.

The Clyde Street lots are a great place though. Any redevelopment of the other end of Queen Street as well. Quinpool is in my mind is the PRIME place for these sorts of developments (residential over-top of retail). I would absolutely love to see Quinpool become a mix of mid to high-rise residential development with retail at grade, and dedicated high frequency transit. Gottingen/Agricola also clearly fall into that. The upside to doing this on Gottingen is that in the short term there empty lots available, the upside to doing this on Quinpool is that I think people are at present more comfortable (rightly or wrongly) with Quinpool as a shopping/restaurant district (especially at night).

[robotropolis]

I was just dreaming yesterday about how amazing it would be to have a SuperTarget downtown(ish) *sigh*. A gal can dream, can't she?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by beyeas

The Clyde Street lots are a great place though. Any redevelopment of the other end of Queen Street as well. Quinpool is in my mind is the PRIME place for these sorts of developments (residential over-top of retail). I would absolutely love to see Quinpool become a mix of mid to high-rise residential development with retail at grade, and dedicated high frequency transit. Gottingen/Agricola also clearly fall into that. The upside to doing this on Gottingen is that in the short term there empty lots available, the upside to doing this on Quinpool is that I think people are at present more comfortable (rightly or wrongly) with Quinpool as a shopping/restaurant district (especially at night).

I think part of the issue here is that the 1950s definition of the downtown centred around Barrington/Hollis is still the predominant one. Halifax has some great growing areas like the south end of Barrington and Spring Garden Road. They don't seem to figure into the discussion much even though today they are more built up than the downtown used to be! People who claim that the core is stagnant need to see side-by-side 2011 and 1981 views of Spring Garden Road from the Citadel.

Barrington today is very well-suited to residential conversions (like NFB), small businesses, and boutique-style shops that can work in heritage buildings. It's not going to be "Main Street" for a city on its way to 500,000 like it was for the old city of 150,000.

Other cities have experienced the same transition. The old "main street" in Toronto for example were areas like Front Street, Queen, and King. Those streets are far less expensive today than Bloor Street, which 100 years ago was in the boonies. Vancouver's equivalent of Barrington was Hastings, which is now a total dump. St. James St. in Montreal used to be the epicentre of Canadian business and now it's just a street in Old Montreal with particularly nice looking buildings that house restaurants and boutique hotels.

It's important to bear all this in mind and make sure that growth is allowed in new areas on the peninsula.

[halifaxboyns]

I would not focus so much on Halifax for an urban style big box retail. I'd use the 'regional core' definition in the regional plan - which is basically all of the peninsula and then all of Dartmouth inside the circ highway.

Then you'd have a pretty broad view.

[halifaxboyns]

I mentioned to Councillor Sloane in a private email; that I sent around the article about this (from the Herald) in our offices out here. Apparently it got some chatter with the Centre City Planners and our law department. Law was hardline; couldn't happen. But apparently there has been work going on with the new downtown land use framework to develop use area rules for such types of uses at grade (seeing as we already have a Holt, the Bay and Winners stores in DT very close to each other).

I had a couple cracks at re-writing her motion over dinner and I would expand the motion to include the regional core (as I said before), but also look into other issues like:

• Incorporation of an urban format 'big box retail store' into a mixed use development;
• Use area restrictions for the maximum size of an urban format retail store;
• Parking requirements;
• Location requirements (on a major road, close to transit stations or major transit lines like BRT/LRT);
• Policy and land use bylaw best practices;
• Mixed use regulations (greater the sized store, greater density required);
• Street level interface (window and facade treatments);
• Location opportunities with in HRM (what are the best areas within the regional core)...

... but I would not focus on forcing a satellite store. I think if you had proper policy; you could do just fine. With the list above, you could easily pound out a two page terms of reference for the study with a list of cities to look at (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, New York, Chicago and perhaps Atlanta) and then a brief public engagement on the idea, if at all, beyond the required public hearing for any policy changes. Personally, I'd suggest a couple open houses through the regional core - just so that you wouldn't have people upset they weren't asked their thoughts. This would be my suggested reworked motion and if you got a few of the regional core Councillors on board, it would look even better.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by halifaxboyns

Law was hardline; couldn't happen.

I've seen vague claims that this has been implemented somewhere in New York (state? maybe?) but I've never seen an actual example of a town with this on the books. Is there a municipality roughly equivalent to the HRM with this regulation? Did the regulation result in new stores that would not otherwise have opened?

Many cities do have urban format big box stores that were in some cases facilitated by city planing but that is quite different.

Vancouver has a fairly substantial parking tax (on the order of 10-15% if I remember correctly) which I believe is handed over to TransLink for transit services.

A parking tax could work. Part of the issue here is that the big box stores don't have to fully pay their way (for road infrastructure, services, and a bunch of externalities they create). If they were taxed fairly I believe we'd still have big box stores but the balance would shift somewhat in favour of urban storefront type retail.

[halifaxboyns]

Originally Posted by someone123

I've seen vague claims that this has been implemented somewhere in New York (state? maybe?) but I've never seen an actual example of a town with this on the books. Is there a municipality roughly equivalent to the HRM with this regulation? Did the regulation result in new stores that would not otherwise have opened?

Many cities do have urban format big box stores that were in some cases facilitated by city planing but that is quite different.

Vancouver has a fairly substantial parking tax (on the order of 10-15% if I remember correctly) which I believe is handed over to TransLink for transit services.

A parking tax could work. Part of the issue here is that the big box stores don't have to fully pay their way (for road infrastructure, services, and a bunch of externalities they create). If they were taxed fairly I believe we'd still have big box stores but the balance would shift somewhat in favour of urban storefront type retail.

This is where I would agree with Councillor Sloane's frustration in shooting down her motion. Without administration being able to do any investigative work; we won't really know if such policy or legislation exists?

I'd like to see the motion brought back but re-worked so that it could be more palitable and maybe even get some of the other regional core councillors on board. The other thing to remember when it comes to planning law is that Canada and the US are really different. So the US planning laws may have more ability than we do here or vise versa.

[Waye Mason]

My gut feeling is more regulation of this type is not going to help. What will help is reinvesting more of downtown's taxes back into downtown, but also lowering commercial taxes to be closer to the national average.