Triangle West Gets Centred
Next Saturday, the character of Vancouver is going to change – just a little. In the neighbourhood of Triangle West, it’s going to change a lot.
Triangle West? Those are the blocks west of Thurlow, between Georgia and Hastings – often lumped in with Coal Harbour. It’s where the highrise condos seem to be rising two to a block.
It’s meant to be a distinguishable neighbourhood (it has its own street design and public art) – but it’s still so new and it has no centre. In particular, no commercial village.
That was a mistake we made when planning Coal Harbour too – you can read the details in Price Tags 88:
Planners expected the residents of Coal Harbour would walk to Robson for their shopping. Up hill. Across Georgia. A kilometre away.
Didn’t happen, wasn’t going to. So the City corrected the mistake by allowing for a new grocery store in the Cielo at Bute and Cordova –a stop along the eventual streetcar line. A major drug store is expected a few blocks south. An Italian coffee shop is pioneering. The ingredients accumulate.
Next Saturday, the grocery store opens:
I lived in Yaletown before the Urban Fare opened on Davie Street. I remember the dramatic difference. Before we had a mid-sized, full-service grocery store, we drove out of the neighbourhood to shop. The streets felt empty. Retail struggled erratically on Pacific Boulevard. Concord Pacific seemed like a gigantic stage set: stunning but lifeless.
The store opened with some brilliant hype: Parisian bread flown in at $100 a loaf. I doubt anyone ever bought any, and it soon disappeared, but the branding had been done.
Urban Fare anchored the local shopping village which began to cluster on a block of Davie in alliance with the Roundhouse Community Centre. It was really the first place you could see who lived there. Because there was a place to walk to do daily shopping, Urban Fare helped fill the streets with pedestrians. It filled the sidewalk out front. And it gave Yaletown a centre.
I suspect the same thing will happen at Cordova and Bute. Residents will have a place to walk, to get provisions, and to check out who lives among them. For the rest of us, it will give a sense of identity to an otherwise nameless neighbourhood. It kickstarts community building – and it proves why a medium-size local supermarket is indispensible.
It is interesting how you point out in Price Tags how each definable centre needs a certain mix of a few shops (grocery store, drug store, coffee shop, etc.) to fully succeed. I don’t recall ever hearing that from anywhere else before, and it does make a whole lot of sense actually. People need gathering places – beyond just parks. I think planners generally have this concept of a centre, but don’t know what defines, or is required, of one. And you’ve defined it. Now, if councils, planners, and developers could all get on the same page before a community goes up…
Seems like the same principle as a mall – anchor tenant draws in the crowds and others flock around it.
I think the toughest part is for a condo project to have a retail space big enough to accommodate a grocery store in its base.
The size of City blocks and the logistics of elevator cores and parking ramps generally eats up the floor plate so that large format stores can’t get a wide-open space for aisles.
i.e.
The Urban Fare at Aquarius is in the middle of a superblock.
The IGA on Burrard is two small floors.
The T&T at International Village is chopped up by cut-outs for escalators and elevator lobbies.
Choices is in a heritage building not affected by condo tower infrstructure.
Other stores are smaller – Nestors and H-Mart.
My neighborhood in DC – Logan Circle – had an amazing transformational experience as described by Gordon and as described by Paul when the Whole Foods market opened here in late 2000. I was new to the neighborhood then but I instantly observed a dramatic shift in the area. At the time a resident who had lived here several years commented quite memorably that she never realized how many people lived in the community until the Whole Foods opened and she started seeing – and meeting – them there. Overnight, it seemed there was a center for the neighborhood. And from that, many many good things have followed:
- A community neighborhood program to work with the city to redefine the area’s “main street” retail areas.
- DC’s only real “loft” district blossomed. There aren’t too many old warehouses in a city where the old industry is government so the lofts here were created in grand 1920′s automobile showrooms (and the garage spaces above them).
- Restaurants, art galleries, hardware store, bike shop, pet stores, clothing stores, coffee shops – most home grown – opened in all the existing and newly constructed retail store-fronts.
It was just amazing, and everyone attribute the real spark to be the opening of that single store.
Credit lies in large part to a very dedicated group of local residences who courted Whole Foods on the location with demographic stats, maps, hosting representatives visiting the area, etc. Whole Foods resisted a bit at first, but for 2 or 3 years after the opening, it was the most successful Whole Foods in the entire eastern US (still near the top of the list). The neighborhood was “that ready” for that untapped resource.
All just goes to show just how instrumental a market can be in bringing a neighborhood to prominence and giving it “a heart,” as you have observed.