Charles St GRT terminal redevelopment

[neonjoe]

Honestly...and feel free to mark my words...but: no retail in the new train station is going to guarantee it's a failure in the sense that nobody will have any reason to or will ever be there unless they're catching a GO train or VIA train. And maybe a local bus if they happen to need one that isn't going to be there for more than 10-15 minutes. But the LRT? Which is the backbone of our transit? Few users of this will venture into the train station.

And so it'll end up feeling like a sterile, white, barren ghost town. They'll spend - what is it...100 or 150 million? To quote the anthropologist Marc Augé from his book Non-Places (full book in this link btw, highly recommended!) - we'll end up with a "[space] of transit, place is giving way to nonplace-an empty, meaningless environment through which we pass alone". It's funny - all the renderings show tens of dozens of people in transit within the building, on the platforms, sitting in the public square. I suspect in reality we'll only ever see people there during a few rush hour periods, some people waiting on buses and then, as usual, plenty of homeless people loitering around, harassing the public for money, cigarettes, cat calling women and nodding off on drugs in the plaza - just as they did at Charles Street.

But if there was retail? A café, restaurant or two, maybe a late night modest bar, a tiny grocery store, a post office, a McDonald's and Popeye's, Western Union, a bank, florist? I can go on and on. If even 2-3 of these things existed in our new train station it could generate not only a lot of business, foot traffic/reason to be there, but also revenue for the station itself/the bills the region will need to pay off for building the pile of crap. But with none of this...I am absolutely, 100% positive it'll just turn out to be a waste of money. A huge, fancy building with no reason for the public to ever utilize lest they need to wait half an hour for their train to get there. And then the general public will, as they often do, point to this project and say: "see, why do we allow them to do this? They spend all this money on public projects nobody uses!".

You are absolutely right, the services are a must and do not need to cater just to the travellers. If we want the area to feel vibrant and safe there needs to be clientele there at all times.