Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Yes, that’s the long-term outcome - different people would shop at Glenmore Landing, people who lived on site. And that’s a good thing.
In the short to medium term, it would displace the people who currently drive to Glenmore Landing. They would get crowded out and need to find a new bank, a new barber, a new bakery, and a new coffee shop to hang out with friends in*. So those who weren’t happy with the proposal were not all being complete morons and defending an empty parking lot. They were being selfish. But being selfish isn’t dumb, and almost everyone is selfish about stuff that affects them personally.
That’s why I don’t like how we frame these issues in public discourse: this new thing will be awesome for everybody, and anyone who disagree is ignorant or a bad person. In reality, every big change is a tradeoff with winners and losers. When those in authority can’t even acknowledge downsides, it fosters a distrust of institutions. People feel they aren’t being presented with the full picture - because they aren’t.
* Not to mention the lab, one of the busiest in the city. Between patients and staff, it probably has a footprint of 30 parking spots, and is one of the main reasons the parking lot is a ####-show.
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I'm certainly not calling anyone a bad person...but I think I would call a lot of it hyperbolic bull####. People will make value decisions based on their perceived experience whether new stuff is built or not. Despite being a pretty poor parking/egress situation, people continue to visit. But it's important to state this clearly:
Glenmore Landing is already one of the worst strip mall parking experiences in the city. We can't possibly change it because we may make that already bad experience worse!.
Never mind any possibility that new investment could catalyze improvements - e.g. a traffic circle instead of the main lights. Never mind that we've already made it a worse experience by closing a main entrance and now nobody parks on the east end (look at google maps). But people continue to come. Never mind the inflation of vehicle size has made the narrow margins in parking worse. Never mind that the local demographic has aged and now many of the visitors are old and slow (especially when they have the audacity to walk SO SLOWLY from their car to the store front).
The construction phase would probably be annoying. Such is life in a big city. We already went through a few years of it for the BRT. People continued to come.
I'm betting people will continue to come. Because here's the thing: nearly every medium-large parking lot in the city is a poor experience. Parking your car in any busy place is a subtly aggravating experience (sometimes not so subtle). We've normalized and accepted it, and that's fine. But it's an asinine reason to uphold the status quo.
Glenmore Landing is the holy trinity of limited access/egress, crowded+tight spaces, and poor pedestrian experience from car door to store door. I'd grade it a C- or D+. But honestly it's not even
that bad - I've never had trouble getting a spot fairly close to our paediatrician, and it's never taken me an extra light cycle to get out. There is usually just an extra 30-90 seconds somewhere along the process, which one perceives to be a lot more annoying than one should when they are sat behind the wheel and want to go vroom vroom. I'm sure it sucks at rush hour. Because of course it does.
Doing a quick mental inventory of every similar parking lot that I visit with any kind of regularity and I can't actually think of a single one that I'd grade higher than a C. So what if some people decide they need to try a new bank/bakery/barber? We're irrational beings...I'd probably drive an extra 5 minutes to avoid what I perceive to be an agonizing 90 second delay, too. That doesn't make it a good argument against a new housing project.
And yes I am aware that my post contains a lot of hyperbolic bull####. It's performance art.