Pertaining to yesterday’s post about encouraging big box stores to open urban outlets if and only if they fit themselves into physical structures that are suitably urban in nature, a reader sent me this article about an urbanist Costco in Vancouver:
The new store is a feat of engineering and an unusual mix of uses. It is built in a hole bordered by GM Place, the Georgia viaduct and the escarpment on the eastern end of Vancouver’s downtown. The 127,000-square-foot store, built by Concord Pacific, has two floors of parking below it, two floors of parking above it, and then, above that, another four towers of residential condos with 900 units. […] To appeal to what is expected to be a slightly higher proportion of downtown shoppers, the store stocks a bigger variety of home-ready meals — chicken parmigiana, prawns and pasta, souvlaki, lasagna, and the like — electronics and leather goods, said Ross. […]
The 700 parking spots will cost $2 for two hours, but in an effort to keep out downtown office workers, the system requires parkers to return to the lot every two hours. Concord Pacific has also incorporated an elevator and stairway that connect the store to the Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain station above it.
This sounds good to me. It’s uncontroversial, of course, that cities need supermarkets. But in DC, unfortunately, a lot of our supermarkets are basically suburban strip mall structures just plopped down into the city — perhaps with less parking than you’d otherwise see. Much better is to do what’s suggested in this article, or something like my new building where many floors of apartments are located directly above a Safeway.
Being within walking distance of a supermarket is a major facilitator of walkable urbanism, just like being within walking distance of a rail station. But like rail stations, major retail destinations like supermarkets (or a Costco) are bound to be somewhat rare. Consequently, it’s important to maximize the residential density in their immediate vicinity. Since it’s often also nice to put a supermarket right by a rail station, it’s an especially tragic lost opportunity when you see something like the strip mall-style Safeway (one-story windowless structure adjacent to an open air parking lot) located right by the Waterfront-SEU Metro station on the Green Line.