$100 Million Wellington/401 Retail Project

[MrSlippery519]

Originally Posted by K85

A giant outdoors place would have me move beside it... When I heard MEC was coming here, I almost bust a nut with giddiness! WE NEED MORE OF THE SPECIALTY STORES!

MEC is opening up in the PetSmart/outlet plaza area correct? I heard rumors about it but did not know it was confirmed...just checked their website and sure enough should be open this fall

As for the 401/Wellington build, I agree we need more specialty type stores and especially in this project they need a flagship store that will make people from other area's actually want to drive to London. It's great getting people from within the city but the goal is no question to get people off the 401 and or people to actually drive to London for something. Bass Pro Shop or Ikea come to mind.

[MrSlippery519]

Has anyone heard anything on this development? I drive by everyday (401) and there has been zero activity aside from last fall when they were working on Dingman.

I assume they are waiting for an anchor tenant to start construction as there is no other logical reason they have not started. I think most of the small locations were be leased pretty much immediately if this was built.

[Whisper09]

Would be a great place for a Bass Pro Shop. You know, cuz London has so many rednecks.

[MolsonExport]

London can't stop building peripheral retail stock even though the city is already oversupplied and the population growth is negligible. This is nothing less than sprawl. The Wonderbread/Southdale and Hyde Parking Lot/Funshawe Big Box Barf continues to expand by the hour, and still has much left to grow. Greenfield shopping complex at Richmond/Sunningdale. While I sit and watch the Westmount shopping centre "transform". How's superstore mall doing?

[MrSlippery519]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

London can't stop building peripheral retail stock even though the city is already oversupplied and the population growth is negligible. This is nothing less than sprawl. The Wonderbread/Southdale and Hyde Parking Lot/Funshawe Big Box Barf continues to expand by the hour, and still has much left to grow. Greenfield shopping complex at Richmond/Sunningdale. While I sit and watch the Westmount shopping centre "transform". How's superstore mall doing?

I work near the Wonderland/Southdale stuff it's crazy how quickly they are adding more and more.

I agree for the most part however what I like about this development is the potential to bring people to London. You get something like an Ikea or Bass Pro Shop and people from out of the area will drive here to go there, and in the process will spend money else ware on food, etc.

Overall a good thing for London from that standpoint.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by MrSlippery519

I work near the Wonderland/Southdale stuff it's crazy how quickly they are adding more and more.

I agree for the most part however what I like about this development is the potential to bring people to London. You get something like an Ikea or Bass Pro Shop and people from out of the area will drive here to go there, and in the process will spend money else ware on food, etc.

Overall a good thing for London from that standpoint.

And there will be 25% less life in St. Thomas, as a result.

[MolsonExport]

Let's face it. The plan of the past ten years has been to sprawl and collect the developers' fees. I have no idea who is buying the hundreds of homes still going up just adjacent to my neighborhood. Everywhere you go on the perimeter, homes are going up like gangbusters. But our unemployment rate is close to 10%, the labor market has been shrinking for 4 years, economic growth has been flat or negative. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Home prices are stagnant or falling in many areas. Dangerously close to negative equity territory for some people out there with 95% mortgages. How wise is it to keep increasing the stock of housing/retail in a shrinking economy? And the concomitant costs of infrastructure expansion (widening Hyde Parking Lot Rd, Oxfart west of said road, North Wonderbread Rd, etc.). Some superfluous highway interchange at the 401 and Wonderbread (where absolutely nobody lives)...for tens of millions of dollars for what? for what? For Walmart? I don't understand at all.

And where has this got London for the past decade? Not very far. We have lost ground against almost all the other big cities in the country. The "build it and they will come" attitude has got to stop. As well as bribing businesses to stay/open up shop, on the backs of the taxpayers. Detroit and Flint have very excellent freeway systems. We have to work on what we already have, not constantly starting over on greenfields. Ramp up Densification in the core (some parts are improving for sure, but immediately beyond it is still shite). Some plan for a light rail line.

[haljackey]

Good points Molson. It's a debate between 20th and 21st century planning.

As for Wonderland/401, it's been identified in the Southwest Area Plan that Colonel Talbot Road in Lambeth is to become more of a 'main street'. It will lose a lane in each direction (probably becoming on-street parking) and Wonderland will be expanded to take the load off this road and become the main arterial.

With gas prices up and failures in other cities to learn from, sprawl is going to slow in London, at least I hope it will. Soon all the land within the city limits (urban growth boundary) will be used up and we will have to think of denser development. All the abandoned lots in the city that businesses used to occupy before they made their way out to the power centres can be good locations for intensification.

Let's just hope they get the ball rolling sooner than later. With the exception of the 401/402 corridor and the Southwest Area Plan, I am against further sprawl in London.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Let's face it. The plan of the past ten years has been to sprawl and collect the developers' fees. I have no idea who is buying the hundreds of homes still going up just adjacent to my neighborhood. Everywhere you go on the perimeter, homes are going up like gangbusters. But our unemployment rate is close to 10%, the labor market has been shrinking for 4 years, economic growth has been flat or negative. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Home prices are stagnant or falling in many areas. Dangerously close to negative equity territory for some people out there with 95% mortgages.

There are still a lot of very wealthy people in London who can afford to buy a house.

[MrSlippery519]

Molson I agree with many of your points, most specifically that London needs to start focusing more on density and less on sprawl which I do think they are doing...to me it sounds like the Mayor anyways understands that the downtown specifically needs to become somewhere people actually live and I think most will agree over the past few years that has happened.

Now to the development at hand, I do think building this right on the 401 will be a good thing. As I mentioned before not only for people in London but more for people coming from Woodstock, Sarnia, Chatham where ever it may be it's a reason to come spend money in London.

I never understood why the sprawl went north rather than south, I would think having the 401/402 in the city and then being able to build more freeways to it would have been a logical plan but obviously not the case.

[haljackey]

Originally Posted by MrSlippery519

I never understood why the sprawl went north rather than south, I would think having the 401/402 in the city and then being able to build more freeways to it would have been a logical plan but obviously not the case.

It's something that's puzzled just about everyone. When the DOH (now MTO) built the 401 they intentionally put it south of the city because they assumed the city would develop to the south. They also envisioned the 402 to go to the north.

But what happened was the opposite. The north got developed and there wasn't any land left to route the 402 so they put it in the undeveloped south.

I've lived near Andover and Viscount my whole life, and I haven't seen anything develop south of Andover and Southdale until very recently (an old folks home and some snobby housing), yet the north and west edges of the city are continually creeping into farmland.

[MolsonExport]

The catalyst behind the growth in northern/western London is surely UWO.

[Simpseatles]

Heard some news about this retail centre recently. Apparently it has now been approved by the City, and from the pictures I saw it looks like it will be a "lifestyle centre" type development, which would be much better than a generic big box centre. Anyone have any more details?

Though the news report made it out to be some sort of disaster that this land would be developed, it has prime 401 frontage, and this is long overdue. Hopefully it will attract shoppers from across the region. My only concern is that it might contribute to the decline of White Oaks Mall, but as long as it appeals to different shoppers it shouldn't be a big problem.

[K85]

Saw pictures? Online or in person?

[Simpseatles]

Originally Posted by K85

Saw pictures? Online or in person?

Oh the renders were on screen very briefly during the CTV news report. Not sure if they can be found online anywhere.

[haljackey]

You can watch the first 15 mins or so of the newscast here: http://london.ctvnews.ca/video?binId=1.1137524
-And you can watch some single news stories from their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/CTVLondon?fref=ts

...But I don't see anything about this story here.

[Snark]

Woodlot aside, this development will add little to the local economy outside of some assessment growth. Within the city, the local retail pie has not appreciably grown in the past 5 years and nor will it in the next 5 or 10. Outside of the city, people who travel to the city from the surrounding 4 or 5 county draw area to shop already do so. Shoppers currently go to White Oaks, Masonville, any number of the big-box plazas, or commercial strips such as Wellington Road and all of that is more than adequate to handle existing and future consumer demand. More people are not going to come to the city from outside of it to shop as a result of this new development and the existing customer base within the city is essentially static and not going to grow beyond the annual 1 or 2 percent population growth of the city.

So, the result? If this development happens and is successful, it will simply draw existing customers from existing retail facilities. More McJobs? Not likely. As the existing retail outlets on Wonderland and Wellington close up shop and are abandoned a la Westmount Mall due to competition from the this mega big box on the freeway, the retail employment that was once at those places will simply be swapped with this new place.

Unless the retail market expands appreciably in the near-term, the long-term result of this mega big box by the freeway will be abandonment of the current malls, big box plazas, and movie theaters. More urban blight. The White Oaks neighbourhood has in many places started to become kind of ghetto. If the mall closes up it will become a slum.

Substituting actual employment growth of real value-adding jobs for a simple shift in existing McJobs from one location to another in the city is nothing more than a shell game. It is hardly the city's "greatest day".

[waterloowarrior]

http://www.penequity.com/Docs/London%20Pkg.pdf

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Snark

Woodlot aside, this development will add little to the local economy outside of some assessment growth. Within the city, the local retail pie has not appreciably grown in the past 5 years and nor will it in the next 5 or 10. Outside of the city, people who travel to the city from the surrounding 4 or 5 county draw area to shop already do so. Shoppers currently go to White Oaks, Masonville, any number of the big-box plazas, or commercial strips such as Wellington Road and all of that is more than adequate to handle existing and future consumer demand. More people are not going to come to the city from outside of it to shop as a result of this new development and the existing customer base within the city is essentially static and not going to grow beyond the annual 1 or 2 percent population growth of the city.

So, the result? If this development happens and is successful, it will simply draw existing customers from existing retail facilities. More McJobs? Not likely. As the existing retail outlets on Wonderland and Wellington close up shop and are abandoned a la Westmount Mall due to competition from the this mega big box on the freeway, the retail employment that was once at those places will simply be swapped with this new place.

Unless the retail market expands appreciably in the near-term, the long-term result of this mega big box by the freeway will be abandonment of the current malls, big box plazas, and movie theaters. More urban blight. The White Oaks neighbourhood has in many places started to become kind of ghetto. If the mall closes up it will become a slum.

Substituting actual employment growth of real value-adding jobs for a simple shift in existing McJobs from one location to another in the city is nothing more than a shell game. It is hardly the city's "greatest day".

You are precisely correct, Snark. It is truly sad to see that this is the best Fontana and co. can come up with. If they wanted to create jobs, they'd go full steam ahead with allowing food trucks, which would demonstrate to the world that London is open for business. Maybe then, companies will want to locate there. Now that I'm on the outside looking in, I'm realizing that the way London is marketing itself these days makes it look somewhat unattractive to business. I wouldn't want to locate a business in a city where new business ideas like the food trucks are met with hostility. And I'm sure I'm not the only person in the Canadian business community who notices this.

The City of London "vetting" food truck menus is as stupid as the Quebec language police.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Snark

Woodlot aside, this development will add little to the local economy outside of some assessment growth. Within the city, the local retail pie has not appreciably grown in the past 5 years and nor will it in the next 5 or 10. Outside of the city, people who travel to the city from the surrounding 4 or 5 county draw area to shop already do so. Shoppers currently go to White Oaks, Masonville, any number of the big-box plazas, or commercial strips such as Wellington Road and all of that is more than adequate to handle existing and future consumer demand. More people are not going to come to the city from outside of it to shop as a result of this new development and the existing customer base within the city is essentially static and not going to grow beyond the annual 1 or 2 percent population growth of the city.

So, the result? If this development happens and is successful, it will simply draw existing customers from existing retail facilities. More McJobs? Not likely. As the existing retail outlets on Wonderland and Wellington close up shop and are abandoned a la Westmount Mall due to competition from the this mega big box on the freeway, the retail employment that was once at those places will simply be swapped with this new place.

Unless the retail market expands appreciably in the near-term, the long-term result of this mega big box by the freeway will be abandonment of the current malls, big box plazas, and movie theaters. More urban blight. The White Oaks neighbourhood has in many places started to become kind of ghetto. If the mall closes up it will become a slum.

Substituting actual employment growth of real value-adding jobs for a simple shift in existing McJobs from one location to another in the city is nothing more than a shell game. It is hardly the city's "greatest day".

Precisely my viewpoint.