Victoria Commons

[BuildingScout]

Are there other areas in the Region that offer this kind of living?  Unless the commercial is a destination draw from outside the neighbourhood or the project is fully built out, there may not be enough traffic (foot, bike, transit or car) to sustain commercial uses at the moment.

From my experience living in other places in the world, local residents are rarely enough to sustain a business. There are many reasons why:

• You need a massive number of residents to have enough customers, and
  
• Residents need to be walking past you in the first place. If there is a covered garage people will park downstairs and take the elevators straight up, having bought their groceries on the way home, and
  
• There has to be a variety of businesses together: if I'm going out to get a capuccino and a gallon of milk, I won't talk to the convenience store downstairs and then drive for the cappuccino: instead I'll drive straight to the plaza where there is a Zehrs and a Starbucks side by side, and
  
• People from outside need to walk past the business. Say, if the store is in between the bus stop and another townhouse complex further down the road, you have now effectively doubled the number of customers.
  

This is why it makes a lot more sense to rezone commercial areas that already have high foot traffic such as University between King and Phillip, or allow increased densities (and thus more residents) in areas that already have foot traffic such as getting rid of the ridiculous three story max restriction on King St in Uptown.