I don't know if this is what Festivus was talking about but online is/will be a kick in the pants for big box retail.

I'm assuming these "progressive" cities also have geographical constraints forcing the urban renewal.

Apples to oranges indeed.

Calgary has gone full speed on infill and they don't have geographic constraints.

Interesting. When I drive through there I see urban sprawl up the ying yang.

Even Regina and Saskatoon are focussed on infill. It is not about land availability. It is about infrastructure costs and long term servicing cost of that infrastructure. A perfect example is people complaining in Whitmore park about having to contribute to the cost of replacing the 75' long sidewalk in front of their house. You also have the maintenance of streets, sewers, waterlines, street lights, hydrants and fire and police service to a larger than needed area. It is simply unsustainable to continue this practice with our cost structure in Canada, until robots take over the work.

New Costco to be 23% larger than existing. Crazy innovative architecture:
:haha:

http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/a...psqmzrlhnd.jpg

Even look at new neighborhoods like Greens on Gardiner. It's the most urban neighborhood built in the past 60 years. The City learned from their mistakes and are forcing density into new areas.

Canterbury Gardens is another example of something that would have never been built 20 years ago.

Nice find, Stormer! I hope they include more cashier lanes and/or some thing/procedure to increase throughput. Costco and Real Canadian Superstore seem to be our staples! :)

Regina is still physically small enough, that changing peoples' preference from driving (and thus, parking) to using a public transportation system probably won't happen for some time! Likewise, new big box store developments with large parking lots may also be part of Regina's future for a while.

Many walkable, downtown Vancouver neighbourhoods actually do have pretty heavy, vehicular traffic, wherever not purposefully restricted -- large metropolitan centres will always have significant, vehicular traffic no matter how well-utilized public transportation is! -- with a lot of the traffics' non-through vehicles requiring parking spaces. Vancouver's various, downtown community planners over the years have just been good at increasing density of parking spaces and/or hiding them. A lot of the places downtown or near downtown, like Home Depot, Save-On foods, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, Whole Foods, Costco, London Drugs, Winners/Homesense, and shopping malls, restaurants, hotels and even the convention centre, Canada Place, and including large condo towers, etc., have or share good-sized, multi-leveled, metred, public, parking garage structures either above ground or underground (majority).

Also, many suburban big box stores in Vancouver will include covered, multi-leveled parking garages, like Real Canadian Superstore, IKEA, some T and T supermarkets! And we notice they are pretty filled whenever we visit these locations! (When we go there (or pretty much anywhere), we drive, toting our 3 kids along!) :)

I agree.

I think this is what bothers me about Regina... the parking lots are needlessly large. And in most cases, it's not the developers begging for bigger lots, it's the City requiring them... while at the same time trying to encourage density & transit usage.

Let's meet in the middle by requiring smaller parking lots - this won't force people to use anything other than their individual vehicles, but it also won't leave us with vast unused parking lots. True, we'll need to suck up a handful of days annually that the lot won't be big enough/people have to circle one more time to find a spot. Other than Costco, I'd guess peak weekly lot usage for WalMarts, Superstores, Home Depot, Lowes, various shopping centres, etc is 75%. Average use is probably closer to 50%. Around Christmas we might see a sustained usage of 70%, peaking near 95%.

No need to build for peak usage...if that were the test, streets around Mosaic would be 4-5 lanes wide each direction to allow for the short burst of pre/post-Rider game traffic flow.

[QUOTE=Scruff Bucket;7761218]Nice find, Stormer! I hope they include more cashier lanes and/or some thing/procedure to increase throughput. Costco and Real Canadian Superstore seem to be our staples! :)


17 by my count. Not sure how many are in the current one.

The Costco goes before the city planning commission on Wednesday.

http://cjme.com/article/1218587/regi...ers-new-costco

[QUOTE=Stormer;7761290]I don't think it matters. It'll continue to be the suburban fustercluck it always was.

Various updates
 

Updates from the Home and Garden Show:

Westerra guys say they have 5 additional retail (including a grocery store) committed and are letting each retailer announce when they are ready. This is in addition to the co-op gas bar and hotels.

Cooperstown - Plans back at the Planning Commission as they would like to proceed this fall. They have no confirmed retail but would also like a grocery store. They have expanded the long-term footprint all the way to the bypass now.

Costco - Plans at the Regina Planning commission.

As an aside, Dilawri guys this morning said they have purchased the old Sears call centre site. But they didn't know what the plans are. The said plans are underway for the parking lot across the street from the old Sears to be developed into a BMW, LandRover and Jaguar dealership(s).

dave

Is there really that much demand to start building Coopertown? I though the economy was slowing some and there was less selling.

I would think Save-on has to be looking at some of those new developments as they are rumoured to want to expand their number in the city.

It's really the future of Regina for the next 20 years ago I understand people being eager to start. For all the talk of a slowdown the City still grew by over 4000 last year.

Harbour Landing is gonna finish this year and the Greens next year so Westerra/The Towns/Coopertown will see a huge push in the next little bit.

The Cooperstown OCP is up at the RPC also. It envisions an urban centre (mini downtown) and 36,000 residents.

The new dealership is big news if true. At least 2 other dealership groups have tried to get a Rover/Jag dealer in recent years.

2 previous plans Dilawri had for Sears across the street appear to have fallen through.

Cornwall has all of the areas slated for major reno (primarily for H&M) walled off... except for Tim's. A little more than half of the seating area between Tims & Zam Zam has been enclosed & the seats relocated to the area in front of MAC (former Bentley).

Really gives you a sense of the scale of H&M. I realize there are a couple small stores in this area, as well as the walkway leading to the new pedway - but it's still a very large space.

That area is going to feel very weird for the next while - especially so once Tim's moves. Anyone heard a timeline on getting the new pedway in? Once that's in place, they should be able to work on H&M as one continuous space, not the disjointed spaces they're working in right now.

Such a crucial development for the mall and a huge anchor for that side which is going to do wonders for mall traffic and for downtown visitors as well. So happy about this!

It should look very "big city". Two big international retailers with street frontage on either side on the entrance.

I'm hoping Sears will downsize/move out in the next couple of years. It should open up a lot of space for new retailers, and give cornwall opportunity to spruce up the sask dr/hamilton sides of the mall.