Eau Claire Market Redevelopment | 135.02m | 35s | Harvard Developments

Rating of the development

  • 1 Really Good

    Votes: 12 23.5%

  • 2 Not Bad

    Votes: 11 21.6%

  • 3 So So

    Votes: 16 31.4%

  • 4 Not Good

    Votes: 9 17.6%

  • 5 Terrible

    Votes: 3 5.9%
  • Total voters
    51
Wandered through Eau Claire on the weekend. Not only is the Harvard project on hold indefinitely but that site (2nd Ave) that QuadReal was going to build purpose rentals on, is still a massive parking lot. With fewer offices and workers downtown now, I can't imagine the parking revenue is that great. You would think with all of the rental building going on in the Beltline, there would be an opportunity for the same in Eau Claire.
 
the 40yr build out of eau claire has been such a fail. dont know if its the citys fault or who to hang it on. maybe the greenline station will be a catalyst, if it ever happens. pathway is great, though someone overlooked retail, as has been discussed here.
 
Apart from the Concord and Anthem developments, all the big proposals that came out the last boom never materialized. Probably the lowest rate in City Centre in arguably the nicest location. We will have to see what happens when construction starts for the Green Line. The proposed Eau Claire station would require demoing the Market and the green roofed townhomes adjacent to the Prince's Island. If the Harvard development doesn't follow closely behind i'm confident this proposal will see the dust bin.
 
1875 said:
the 40yr build out of eau claire has been such a fail. dont know if its the citys fault or who to hang it on. maybe the greenline station will be a catalyst, if it ever happens. pathway is great, though someone overlooked retail, as has been discussed here.
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I would think that land values and speculative booms have been the driver for why we haven't seen much action despite huge growth elsewhere. Every boom since the 1980s dreamed of mega-scale urban developments in the north part of downtown and Eau Claire that require huge timelines and funding to come to fruition. Every bust reset the clock and sent projects back to the drawing board as the pieces didn't line up on big, expensive projects that would take a long time to finish. Until 2010-2015 or so, every plan included huge amounts of office space that makes little sense going forward, so it was back to the drawing board again.

Perhaps improving accessibility (i.e. through the Greenline) would raise the location value high enough to get things going, but I wouldn't be so sure. The area is already is fairly transit-accessible with 7th Avenue nearby and the stellar pathway system as the primary amenity. It definitely wouldn't hurt though.

Personally I don't care about more towers, I would be happy with a Portland-style Pearl District (i.e. 4-12 stories) or even some of the development scale we see in Marda Loop - really anything in an urban, pedestrian format that finally connects downtown core to the river with a continuous urban environment. But I would guess whatever giant corporation that owns those empty lots paid so much for them during one of the booms that they think they can wait around for whatever market conditions they want - and that probably means that it would only make sense for big tower developments, even if that's a long way off.
 
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1875 said:
the 40yr build out of eau claire has been such a fail. dont know if its the citys fault or who to hang it on. maybe the greenline station will be a catalyst, if it ever happens. pathway is great, though someone overlooked retail, as has been discussed here.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure of the exact business deals that led to Eau Claire Market, but it has all the makings of a typical failed public-private mega-project. I would guess that the City helped assemble and clear out the land, and then handed it over to a for-profit developer who promised to create the next Granville Island of Fisherman's Wharf. In the end, the only thing they built was a suburban mall on the cheap, surrounded by parking lots. Lots of parallels with the arena deal, of course.

Now the problem is that a single developer owns all the land in Eau Claire with very little incentive to do anything with it other than sit on it and wait for another boom. A browse through Harvard's real estate holdings doesn't provide any confidence that they actually know how to develop this land. It's the same situation around Westbrook Station with Matco.

What's unfortunate is that the bus barns that used to occupy Eau Claire until the 1980s actually resemble the built form of Granville Island. If they had simply been left alone, there is a chance that the area might have developed more along those lines. The city really should have just leased the bus barns out to community groups and non-profits rather than bringing a big developer in.
 
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Silence&Motion said:
I'm not sure of the exact business deals that led to Eau Claire Market, but it has all the makings of a typical failed public-private mega-project. I would guess that the City helped assemble and clear out the land, and then handed it over to a for-profit developer who promised to create the next Granville Island of Fisherman's Wharf. In the end, the only thing they built was a suburban mall on the cheap, surrounded by parking lots. Lots of parallels with the arena deal, of course.

Now the problem is that a single developer owns all the land in Eau Claire with very little incentive to do anything with it other than sit on it and wait for another boom. A browse through Harvard's real estate holdings doesn't provide any confidence that they actually know how to develop this land. It's the same situation around Westbrook Station with Matco.

What's unfortunate is that the bus barns that used to occupy Eau Claire until the 1980s actually resemble the built form of Granville Island. If they had simply been left alone, there is a chance that they area might have developed more along those lines. The city really should have just leased the bus barns out to community groups and non-profits rather than bringing a big developer in.
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I believe the city owned it until 2005 ish. It failed rapidly as the City tried to recover costs before it was really anything more than an Imax with a food court. The Forks in Winnipeg on the other hand, you have the federal government as a very long term landlord - in 2006 it was worse than Eau Claire in 2006, but by 2017 it was 100x better. Over the years in Winnipeg they cultivated good vendors.
 
Interesting comparison with the Forks. My perception is that the Forks also incorporates historic architecture, which would probably make it easier to attract better vendors.

I believe the federal government was also involved in the establishment of Granville Island.
 
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