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.

Here is a really good example of having "street facing doors" to commercial units in a relatively new plaza in Guelph (at Wellington Street and Gordon Street). The units actually have dual doors - one to the parking lot in the 'rear' and one to Gordon Street. The plaza is at a major intersection with each road at 4 lanes. However, on-street parallel parking was recently added on Gordon Street in front of the units.

A lot of retailers are reluctant to have dual entrances at the front and back for loss prevention purposes, but for restaurants, it can work well.

In order for "street facing doors" to work on Northfield, I think at a minimum, it would require some on-street parking.

This is good, but it looks more like King St S than Northfield -- maybe I'm wrong, I don't really know Guelph.  Parking at the street would surely help, yes.  Doing entrances ONLY at the street, forcing people to walk around (again, similar to King St S) would be better yet.

All that said, I'm not opposed.  I'm just somewhat skeptical of how well it will work, at least in the short/medium term.