Condo Success. Condo Dilemma. (14. July 2006, 11:59 by Derek Young) ~ Example For Tacoma?
Governing Magazine’s June issue has a story on Vancouver condos that seems to strike amazingly close to home. The general idea is that the city’s policies and choices in the early nineties intended to attract residents worked so well that office space and other aspects of the downtown lifestyle are disappearing.
Vancouver has begun to realize that its downtown is such a magnet for urban condo dwellers that it runs the risk of ceasing to serve the other purposes downtowns have traditionally served — as centers of commerce, corporate employment, jobs and overall economic life. It’s not that business has fled central Vancouver: The downtown peninsula still ranks first as an employment center within the metropolitan area, with about 77,000 jobs. But the percentage keeps going down, there have been virtually no major office building projects launched in this century, the amount of land available for new commercial development is almost non-existent, and given the still-explosive demand for high-rise urban living, it doesn’t take too much imagination to see what downtown Vancouver could become in a decade or two: a place where huge numbers of people live but not many work.
Is that our problem? Not yet. But what happens if our residential condominium boom continues, mixed use is only occasionally built, and we see no new commercial space downtown? City Hall is talking about going condo and new condo projects are popping up all over town. We continue to hear that retail and commercial will follow, but where will they go if all the prime space is taken by condo projects. Is this our problem in ten, twenty, or thirty years? Is this our problem now?
The Exit133 posting only skims the surface. Check out the whole article. It’s a worthwhile read.
Enough of you seemed convinced of the applicability of this article to Tacoma that I received ‘tips’ from a half dozen folks. Thank you.
Link to Governing
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I haven’t checked Tacoma’s building codes, but it seems to me that retail space is not required in mixed-use projects.
Last year, when I visited the Marcato sales office to inquire about retail space, they looked at me funny and said there wasn’t any. This strikes me as odd considering the scale of the project. And I have to wonder about all the housing going in on the Hillside (G Street) also with no built-in retail space.
I can’t help but think we are perpetuating our dependence on automobiles (and foreign oil) while at the same time missing incredible opportunities to encourage transit oriented development.
1 | Posted by morgan | Jul 14, 02:19 PM
I thought that the Destination Downtown documents required new construction to have some kind of public/ retail space on the ground floor.
I also wondered why Marcato wasn’t required to add retail space or atleast live/work space. Who would want to live on the first floor facing Tacoma Ave?
For instance the Woolworths Buidling downtown. I heard they were required to put the art gallery space in because of the Destination Downtown requirements. The building other than the art gallery has no public use as it is an AT&T server location.
2 | Posted by jake | Jul 14, 03:39 PM
In the case of the Woolworths building I understood that code requires windows in buildings at street level, and since AT&T or whoever uses the building would not want people seeing the servers and equipment (for security) they create shadowboxes behind the windows.
3 | Posted by Steve | Jul 15, 10:16 PM
The Governing Magazine’s article is a very good one. If Tacoma could only have some of the conditions Vancouver has.
Their downtown has a ton of retail and many places which has not just one but two stories of retail downtown.
Office space is important too. However, Tacoma’s is now just starting to get a trickle of people living downtown.
As far as street level retail, I am unsure of the zoning. However, I thought buildings had to have retail in the Central Business District.
Commenting is closed for this article.
- Posted: 14. July 2006, 11:59
- Author: Derek Young
- Category: The-Politics-of-Development
- Comment Status: Closed
