How does Downtown London’s new study hold up against Windsor?
Twice in a week there have been two Editorials in the London Freepress talking about a recently released report from Mainstreet London and the Downtown London BIA.The path to success for downtowns is always the same in the broad strokes with minor changes in the details specific to each downtown. I’d like to rate how Downtown Windsor’s strategic plan and results hold up to the Downtown London Recommendations http://www.lfpress.com/cgi-bin/publish.cgi?p=15181&x=letters&l_publish_date=&s_publish_date=&s_keywords=&s_topic=downtown&s_letter_type=POV&s_topic=downtown&s_letter_status=Active&s=letters Downtown presents a simple challenge
Over the decades, all the reports, including one released last week, and all the experts, including one visiting last week, agree on at least one thing that can improve downtown London: more people. The population of the core is about 6,000 - and growing rapidly thanks to the construction of new apartment-condominium towers. That needs to double over the next few years, according to a report put together by volunteers from MainStreet London and the London Downtown Business Association.
Windsor’s Downtown is in a fair position population wise but without the demographic of London’s. Their new apartment-condominimium towers are higher priced than RWT and Victoria Park Place. However we have the new condo’s adjacent to downtown on the riverfront that will help level the playing field. The main difference here is that they will act on their report to double their downtown population while Windsor has put the City Center West, Sustainable downtown and adjacent Glengarry Marentette Community Improvement Plans on hold.
The recommendations are outlined in this second Editorialhttp://www.lfpress.com/cgi-bin/publish.cgi?
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The report outlines three main goals: -
Double the number of people living downtown. - See above
Make Dundas Street the most exciting street in London.
This includes turning it into a pedestrian mall which has also been proposed for Ouellette Avenue. Dundas may very well be suited for this purpose which is definitely not practical for Ouellette. Traffic cannot flow through to the River on Pelissier, McDougall and potentially Goyeau if the tunnel plaza ever goes ahead. Closing Ouellette to vehicular traffic would cut the riverfront off for 4-5 blocks.Pelissier could potentially be suited for a pedestrian mall but a traffic study would have to be conducted. No money is budgeted to study such a proposal.One thing we should remember though is that 70% of pedestrian malls failed and were reopened to traffic in North America. When I spoke to the Sparks Street mall ED from Ottawa, (which is touted as a success) she told me that half of the retailers on that street would rather have it converted back to traffic but are holding their tongues in order not to deter tourists (Imagine that, being a team player)
But as far as streetscaping goes, we have them hands down. Not only do we have a beautiful Ouellette Streetscape, the DWBIA decorated it with trees at night and plans to fill it with flower planters this spring. I say we could go toe to toe with London and come out with a KO.- Make downtown London the greenest in Canada. That sounds like too much of a platitude and I’d like to read the report to see the specifics. Windsor missed several huge opportunity by not investing in a greenroof on the new transit terminal, police station and 400 bldgs. Either way, both cities have a long way to goThis is just a superficial overview, but the point is how much London is focusing on their downtown.
Times running out, call 311 or visit the official plan review site at www.citywindsor.ca and demand the same things that London Demands
Tags: community improvement plan, Downtown, london, Official Plan, residential, Urban Design
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Don’t be fooled by the hype. Here’s a copy of the letter that I submitted earlier this evening to our community weekly…
submitted moments ago as a ‘Letter to the Editor’ of The Londoner:
Pedestrians Are Tired of City Hall Posturing
With respect to Ben Benedict’s questionably titled but otherwise excellent article (’A new vision for downtown London‘; The Londoner; 2008/02/27). Gord Hume didn’t need to read a report commissioned by the LDBA in order to learn that we need “more feet on the street” or how to get them there. All that he and other Council members had to do was support my proposal for a Pedestrian Committee and/or open their eyes to some of the issues that I’ve been emailing them about for so long. That short-sightedness can still be rectified however, and a good first step would be their attendance when I appear before CPSC tomorrow.
I appreciate that the report states what I think is obvious. However many of the public don’t feel the same way.
I simply like the fact that the London Freepress and Gord Hume are hyping the downtown and educating the public about what needs to be done. I’ don’t think you can ever do that enough.
Sure the population needs to increase but Windsor continues to want to lure students to the downtown instead of people who will live there for the long haul.
Interesting, but I do not believe that pedestrian malls are the answer. There are far more failures than sucesses on that front. Countless attempts at that movement during the 1970’s have failed, and been convered back.
Don’t forget one of the keys to London’s downtown revival was the installation of the new arena. The John Labatt Centre has helped turn downtown London into a place to go. Luckiliy for us our civic leaders don’t have vision or foresight.
As long as we keep trying to land engineering schools, and music schools and other insitiutions, instead of replacing the housing that was needlessly exproprated and demolished, I don’t think we’ll ever have to deal with that pesky revitalization in our downtown.
Now excuse me while I get in my Hummer and drive out to the sprawl to go shopping.
Just curious, does anyone know where all those people who live in the condos on Pelissier do their shopping, dining, etc.? I often wonder. Even with all the housing that was torn down, places like VPP should provide a nice centralized glut of shoppers with disposable income right at ground zero. Are they heading straight down their elevators to the parking garage and leaving downtown? BTW this is not to say that the condos alone are the solution - we still need the housing back obviously. Just wondering why such a concentration of residents in those buildings isn’t doing more than what I think it should be for downtown.
I disagree about the schools. I like to think of it as a logical place to start. You’re best bet on recruiting residents are those campus graduates. I believe you could realistically recruit 10% of all University and College Downtown Campus Graduates.
Its far more easier to recruit people who have come downtown on a daily basis and have had some good years there.
DWBIA conferences tell me that it is not likely you will get people who have already accepted suburban life to move downtown other than the seniors selling their homes. They said the best new recruiting grounds are graduates and new people moving into your city.
I’d like to see people coming to our city receive a flyer co-oridinated by WEBIAC that says which District will you pick to live in with a brief description of the 5 downtown BIA’s as well as every other BIA in Windsor including Ottawa st. Erie St., walkerville etc. etc. etc..
John, I dont’ think we do a good job on getting our downtown residents out of their towers onto the streets. The former DWBIA ED proposed a loyalty program option for downtown residents but that never got off the ground. I think all BIA’s should have them as they are the best bang for their buck.
Ah, so much work to do and so little time
Mark, the issue isn’t trying to bring the suburbanites to move downtown, we know they won’t. But what about those who won’t move downtown because there isn’t a decent neighbourhood nor good houses to move into? The city has to provide this in order to get those who want to live in an urban environment to move.
Case in point…Detroit. Most couldn’t and wouldn’t live downtown because there wasn’t any place that you could live there. Now with the multitude of lofts and new housing they have had MAJOR increases in the downtown population. The same thing with Cincinnati and to some extent Cleveland. All with little help from the University crowd.
Granted, I know there is a peice if the puzzle for schools downtown but I would suggest smaller schools could be built on the many parking lots we already have downtown and build the mixed-used (READ: houses and business) on the City Centre West property. These small schools could easily house arts students or law students but we still need good housing stock downtown. There is a bigger demand than most think just remember…Detroit.
Once again we end up in the circle. If we don’t have exciting work for these new grads waiting for them in the downtown, or in the city for that matter there is no reason for them to stay. If the work isn’t located within the core then downtown just becomes another car suburb as all the hipsters hop in their cars and drive out to the edge to work. Whatever plan is cooked up for downtown we have to address new business opportunities downtown as well as new residential development.
I don’t understand why this wasn’t brought up when they were discussing bringing the engineering school downtown. I’ve heard that there’s a huge amount of empty office space downtown. The engineering department has a co-op program. Why not appeal to engineering firms to locate their offices downtown, where they could have had access to a wealth of co-op students? Then the students could have gotten a job downtown when they were done school, and wouldn’t even have to find a new apartment. I don’t know, maybe that would have been part of the package if the city had actually made some kind of real presentation to the university. Anyway, doesn’t matter much now, I guess.
Want to help downtown businesses? Bring back on street parking. I don’t know how many times I have heard that there is a lack of parking downtown (though there isn’t it is just perceived because you can’t see it and have to go driving on one-way streets around and around until you find it). Also, drop the cost of the parking meters…that helps in a big way!
In a year long, very heated debate, we brought as much on street parking as we could with streetscape. I think we added something like 15 spots from Riverside to Wyandotte on the plan. The only way we could add more spots was to eat into pedestrian, cafe space or cut down mature trees.
Parking is not the problem. You can’t find a downtown in North America that doesn’t see parking complaints. You cannot find sufficient street parking in any thriving downtown and it doesn’t ever detract from them.
We have a gap between on street and off street parking thats necessary to get people to use the garages. Garages are 1 hour free and $1 per hour vs. $1.25 per hour at the meters. That rate is consistent with every canadian city
THe only way you’re going to get better housing built is to complete the community improvement plans which call for a market rate housing study which is needed to attract developers.
Those plans are on hold until 2011 or beyond.
I wonder why they are on hold Mark? It seems they didn’t need to be on hold for the new contruction that is going to happen beside the arena?
I hope this doesn’t sound idealistic, but with the aging population and growing empathy for those with physical handicaps, do you not think that some more street parking might still help, especially if it is designated? Pro arborists are capable of moving mature trees with the right equipment (it’s actually neat to watch). I think we can afford to give up more sidewalk, if only on the east side of the street where there are fewer food patios, no? if light rail ever sees the light of day in this city, some sensible sacrifices and compromises will have to be made eventually anyway. Therein I suppose is also a big part of the solution - give the people a better means of public transit into and out of downtown so they don’t need to worry about parking. But I do agree in principle with you, the parking “problem” downtown is a perception problem perpetuated mostly by people who haven’t even tried to find a space downtown since 1975.
No way, the trees couldn’ thave been moved without killng them. the bulbs were too small and to remove the planters would have put them above the ground. I called the “pro arborists” myself because I wanted them moved more than anyone to make room for both pedestrians and parking
I’m curious about “The population of the core is about 6,000 - and growing rapidly thanks to the construction of new apartment-condominium towers.” Is it actually growing rapidly, or is it just assumed to be growing? More often than not, addition of apartment-condominium towers to already-dense housing result in a reduction of population rather than an increase. It depends on the housing and population mix that were there before.
The reasons are complex, but essentially larger households (with children) get replaced with smaller households. You need many units of 1-2 people to replace households of 4 or so if you want to increase population density. Putting up new apartment-condo towers tends to create a dead zone - an area immediately surrounding them where population density is very low.
Many central cities have experienced this decline in population following an increase in apartment units. The tragedy is that the larger households that move out feed the sprawl monster by moving to new houses in the suburbs. If the exodus is significant, the central walkable neighbourhoods lose the critical mass to support institutions such as schools.
Martin thanks for posting. Unfortunately Windsor’s downtown is surrounded my very low income neighbourhoods with a wealth of victorian/edwardian homes. These people will not be able to move out of their plight and will continue to be ghetto-ized by the policies of the city.
Yes, in most cities your scenario rings true. But we are talking about Windsor afterall whre up is down and down is up. Just ask the mayor who believes our economy is cyclical yet the professor of economics at the UofW states otherwise. Who would you believe?
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