Shops at Waterloo Town Square

[ijmorlan]

Their best shot is to make pedestrian streets (possible covered) and convert the mall into part of the getting on and off the LRT experience. There would be a ton of traffic and plenty of business opportunities. It also needs 30+ stories of office/residential space on top.

Definitely covered. It’s absurd that malls are considered “dead” given our weather. What better pedestrian experience could there be than a fully weather-protected, pedestrian-only street? That is what a mall corridor is, or could be.

The problem with malls is the lack of connection from the mall to nearby destinations. The stores within the mall are well connected to each other, but to get to anything else (in many cases, even some of the stores on the same property), one has to cross a huge expanse of parked cars. There are also issues with the “streets” being privately owned and with, in effect, an entire shopping district being owned by one landlord.

I see a lot of anti-mall stuff that in effect is blaming the roof for other problems.

Getting back to WTS, the new buildings along King, south of Willis Way, should have been built far enough back that King St. would have room for both LRT tracks. There should have been two sidewalks, one a normal exterior sidewalk, the other incorporated into the buildings and at least covered, maybe even enclosed. Up where the Northbound LRT stop will be, I would have had both directions stop indoors, next to a daylighted Laurel Creek. Note that for this part I’m not sure exactly how much stuff I’m proposing changing all at once: as far as I’m concerned the part about the buildings on King St. is just pointing out an error in what was done, but I don’t know exactly where the creek runs or how hard it would be to adjust it and how much existing building would have to be elsewhere so that part might really be impractical starting from any recent historical reality.