Standard suburban build. The extra density will be good.
Bow River Shopping Centre | 30m | 10s | ONE Properties
- Thread starter Urban Outdoorsman
- Start date
Albertasaurus
Senior Member
Agree re: the excess surface parking, but the buildings themselves look decent enough.
Mountain Man
Senior Member
As long as the parking is internal and not facing the street, I don't mind it so much.
MichaelS
Senior Member
So the western lot has a DP in, they are getting a Shoppers Drug Mart and an additional pad retail building. But the DP drawings again show a future residential building, so we will see:
Also, there are updated drawings for the prposed apartment building on the north parcel:
Also, there are updated drawings for the prposed apartment building on the north parcel:
CBBarnett
Senior Member
With a potential apartment building in the works nearby, it reinvigorated my disappointment that the garden centre redevelopment project triggered a sub-standard width on a brand new pathway to protect a ginormous round-about right-of-way:
It's my main gripe with our planning system overall - almost no other place builds like this. It's not just the amount of asphalt and land consumed for vehicle movements (which is wildly excessive), it's the attention to detail for one road user group only that is so obviously driving all design decisions at the expense of all else (truck movements to Superstore). Look at how much curvy, turning radii math went into supporting truck movements here with widths of every element excessive for even the largest vehicles. Every corner is swooping and unique. The only below-standard elements are any provision for street trees and the deviation/narrowing of the pathway so the round-about can be even larger.
This example is so illustrative because it's brand new - all these decisions happened in what was a pretty generous development area with minimal constraints - perhaps that was the problem! I am not aware of another example of a suburban Costco, Walmart or Superstore in metro Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal that does anywhere near this customized, every-corner-is-unique, land consuming road build-out design.
There must be something unique about our processes that give this level of influence to transportation assessment in projects, while also having something unique that triggers such hegemony of truck movements at speed in the design process. In greenfield power centres miles from anything it's a disappointing design, but in redevelopment with substantial local population density it's really a brutal outcome.
This is obviously a made up statistic - but I'd take a bet that 99.99% of all big box store developments in Canada don't have this level of service for big trucks and they seem to operate just fine.
It's my main gripe with our planning system overall - almost no other place builds like this. It's not just the amount of asphalt and land consumed for vehicle movements (which is wildly excessive), it's the attention to detail for one road user group only that is so obviously driving all design decisions at the expense of all else (truck movements to Superstore). Look at how much curvy, turning radii math went into supporting truck movements here with widths of every element excessive for even the largest vehicles. Every corner is swooping and unique. The only below-standard elements are any provision for street trees and the deviation/narrowing of the pathway so the round-about can be even larger.
This example is so illustrative because it's brand new - all these decisions happened in what was a pretty generous development area with minimal constraints - perhaps that was the problem! I am not aware of another example of a suburban Costco, Walmart or Superstore in metro Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal that does anywhere near this customized, every-corner-is-unique, land consuming road build-out design.
There must be something unique about our processes that give this level of influence to transportation assessment in projects, while also having something unique that triggers such hegemony of truck movements at speed in the design process. In greenfield power centres miles from anything it's a disappointing design, but in redevelopment with substantial local population density it's really a brutal outcome.
This is obviously a made up statistic - but I'd take a bet that 99.99% of all big box store developments in Canada don't have this level of service for big trucks and they seem to operate just fine.
Red Star
Active Member
I think the size of the traffic circle is okay. But it should have been installed 2m or 3m to the south. It's not like the there wasn't enough empty space to accommodate the traffic circle.
Urban_Views
New Member
Alternately the townhome development could have been pushed north by a meter or two by making the lane smaller. I'm assuming the lane is that wide because the development only has one entrance point, which it could have resolved by connecting to the existing lane. The townhomes are a city project are they not?