Waterloo Corporate Campus

[tomh009]

This development could stand to learn from what I've been seeing go up in suburban Toronto.

Here, at Midland/McNicoll, there's a street-adjacent retail building.  The parking is around the back.  The building has been built with street-accessible entrances, and parking-accessible entrances for each unit. It is up to the individual retailer to decide which one they want to be their front door.  It allows the development to be parking-facing in the early years, but if the street ever becomes more active, then there can be a very natural transition.  Some could even potentially use both entrances simultaneously.

I know that one.  It's a nice concept, but the reality is that Midland is a high-speed, heavy-traffic four-lane arterial road (pretty similar to Northfield, in fact).  Few people slow down enough to see the store signage, let alone stop.  And when I walk past there (to get to Starbucks), I rarely see anyone walking.  The result is that the tenants' street-facing windows are effectively being used just for signage, or are simply obscured. 

The intentions are right, but with this kind of traffic patterns, it's really hard to make it work.