What does DTK need?

[danbrotherston]

Huh? Why would you not want to draw people downtown...? Of course we do! And big brands are a good way to do it. Local businsesses are great and everything, but not everybody cares, wants or needs to shop at them. Sometimes you just need to grab some clothes at a Zara or want to eat a McDonald's burger. You can do that in literally every big city in the world but you have to literally drive your car (or waste an hour on a bus) to go to the suburbs to do something so basic in Waterloo Region. And no, investing in transit hubs, bike lanes and other frivolous nonsense like that isn't going to bring many people downtown. Things people need will.

So long as we have a downtown that consists primarily of nothing but small local businesses and a few shops that close by 6PM, then the vast majority of people living in Waterloo Region aren't going to bother to come downtown (which is especially worsened with the zombie junkies that are living all over the place now). But I guarantee if you could wave a magic wand and have a bunch of popular stores open up, have some good entertainment venues, open up some mainstream food places, make the drug addicts disappear and so on, then people would likely flock down there. Your average citizen has really no reason to venture downtown and that is a problem.

Why we would want to make our downtown more like any other suburban neighbourhood mall is beyond me. What draws me downtown (and had me move just last month to be even closer to the core) is all of those small, local businesses, community events, transit, the market, and more active transportation and pedestrian-focused areas. I'd be curious as well, is there clear evidence that adding a few big box-stores to a downtown actually brings more people to the core as a whole? I know a lot of people say that, but I'd love to see if it generally plays out that way.

I don't think people are asking for big box stores. Big box is a specific architectural design for a plaza and store: single story, cheap construction, large surface parking. Instead I believe people are asking for retail downtown from major brands in a urban context (stores below apartments, no setbacks, no parking, etc.) I do think there could be more retail downtown, and I understand why people want that and think it might help. I think there are advantages to smaller brands, but for example, I have no idea where I would buy clothes downtown (or uptown for that matter). There might be smaller retailers, but I don't know them.