Bow River Shopping Centre | 30m | 10s | ONE Properties

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Urban Outdoorsman

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I'm sure somebody's probably mentioned this proposal at some point, but was driving past today and noticed there seems to be a lot of site prep.

The project is located in bowness where the old sunnyside garden center used to be. Its a mixed use proposal, with a combination of bigbox, light industrial and medium-high density housing.
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Overall I'd give it a 6/10. I don't like the massive parking lots and I definitely think they could have included more housing. That being said I imagine the market for high density housing in a place like bowness probably isn't large enough to warrant more than a few buildings. I do however apreciate the inclusion of light industrial. Weirdly enough i think the NW could use a lot more light industrial/warehouses. Mostly due to the fact that not a single craft brewery is operating in the NW because there's nowhere for them to go.
 
This site desperately needs a pedestrian/bike crossing of the railroad near the north end, connecting to 35th Ave on the east side of the tracks. The residential component of the project is about a 1100m walk from the main street in Bowness (1300m today without the multi-use path parallel to the tracks); adding the crossing would drop this to 600m or so. Huge bang for the buck.
 
I guess this is now called the Bow River shopping center. Here's the updated site plan:
Screenshot_20211202-080704.png

Nothing spectacular, would have been nice to see a stronger residential component but given Trinity Hills and Greenwich are both within spitting distance I guess it's not surprising. There's only so much demand for high density residential in this area and I suppose they figured the market was too saturated to double down on the residential. That being said, the area seems pretty saturated in the retail market as well. Not even half the retail bays in Trinity Hills are leased and mainstreet Bowness is only a few blocks away.
 
I think the comparisons to Trinity Hills is apt, given their proximity. What is disappointing with this one is the much higher degree of design that Trinity Hills is brinign, with a proper residential above retail main street. This one is very suburban in its design. All of the retail on 69th Street will likely be very inward facing, meaning the angled parking stalls will not be facing shop fronts, but rather papered over windows.
 
MichaelS said:
I think the comparisons to Trinity Hills is apt, given their proximity. What is disappointing with this one is the much higher degree of design that Trinity Hills is brinign, with a proper residential above retail main street. This one is very suburban in its design. All of the retail on 69th Street will likely be very inward facing, meaning the angled parking stalls will not be facing shop fronts, but rather papered over windows.
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I hate that when this happens - it's a classic "follow the letter of the law, not the spirit of it problem". It's saying that as long as buildings look more sustainable, urban, pedestrian friendly etc. then they are good enough, even if they aren't any of those things in practice. Strip malls facing the wrong way but with nicer alleys effectively (the alley in this case being the public street).
 
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MichaelS said:
I think the comparisons to Trinity Hills is apt, given their proximity. What is disappointing with this one is the much higher degree of design that Trinity Hills is brinign, with a proper residential above retail main street. This one is very suburban in its design. All of the retail on 69th Street will likely be very inward facing, meaning the angled parking stalls will not be facing shop fronts, but rather papered over windows.
Click to expand...
Agree. There's very little urban about this at all really.
 
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