What does DTK need?

[danbrotherston]

"doubled"...I mean, I'm not going to look up the numbers to see if that's true because it doesn't matter. Our society is incredibly safe. If the rate doubled, it's still low. You are needing to see changes that are orders of magnitude to meaningfully change the safety in our society. It certainly does not mean things have "gone to shit".

And we absolutely have not had an "explosion" of targeted murders. You are spreading the kind of FUD that gets FOX News hosts their fucking jollies.

Stop drawing parallels between "seeing an addict" (which is not a crime or suffering in anyway beyond the pain of seeing another human suffering) and nuisance crimes like vehicle theft and extremely violent and dangerous crimes like assault and murder. These are three wildly different things, and equating them does not help anyone but realestate developers who want to pave our greenbelt.

But the worst thing you've referring to homeless people as an "infestation", that is an evil, dehumanizing thing to say.

This comment is not the sort of environment I want to experience thank you very much.

Well the statistics are all there if you do want to actually see that crime, drug use, deaths and homelessness have in fact gone up. It doesn't matter what words you want to use to describe it, the proof is available to you.

Yes our society is incredibly safe, but at the same time it is becoming less safe than it has been previously. Why deny this? It seems like your response to this is very emotional, rather than approaching this objectively for what it is.

I'm by no means attempting to dehumanize people who suffer from homelessness, drug use or mental illness. I've personally struggled with addiction and mental illnesses for my entire life, using everything from fentanyl to obscure "designer" drugs you've certainly never heard of. I've been diagnosed with everything from borderline personality disorder to psychotic depression over the years. For that reason, I am comfortable calling things out for what they are because my own personal experiences allow me to fully understand things like what trauma can do to a person, what poor coping mechanisms result in, what desperation for drugs or money can force people to do etc. I have no reason to sugar coat things and believe me, the people on the streets talk this way too. Luckily these issues never fully consumed me and despite falling into an abyss many times I nonetheless managed to create a life where I've been able to live all over the planet, hold the highest academic degree one can achieve by completing a doctorate, achieve major contributions to society and so much more. This isn't meant to be "bragging", just acknowledgement that one can suffer from these sort of hurdles and overcome them. While not all these people may be able to or wish to aim so high, many are capable of great things themselves if they had the personal will power and help.

My point, really, is that these issues are becoming a huge problem that is evidently continuing to grow and grow and grow with very little help from anyone to change this. When anti-social, destructive, criminal behaviour is allowed to flourish it drags not just those directly suffering from it down but also everyday people like all of us here. All an addict needs to do to impact others is leave a dirty needle around and poke someone, possibly infecting them with HIV. Or maybe they squat a building and burn it down killing people. Or they steal from businesses and ruin someone's hard work. Or they die and their family has a piece of themselves ripped out of their heart forever. It's fucked up and shouldn't be tolerated, but we as a society need to find a solution and be honest about what is going on.

If this sort of stuff is not what you want to experience, then good, I guess. Leave it to people like the actual addicts, the homeless, NGOs and non-profits, medical professionals, social workers, politicians and urban planners and architects like myself who actually have lived experience and knowledge of this stuff to work together to solve these problems. These problems hurt cities - drastically. Remember NYC in the 80s? Detroit in the 70s? All of California right now? Those cities were completely destroyed in many regards due to things like crime, drugs, homelessness and awful economics. I don't want to see that happen to Waterloo Region because we've been there before and are finally rebuilding things again. But as these issues worsen, we need to be honest about them and find solutions so we help not only business owners and people living in the region, but also the transients and addicts who are dying by the dozens each year from drugs, cold, malnutrition etc.

Sure my way of talking about these things is blunt, I guess, but I'm far too old and lived to worry about being woke and politically correct.

Political correctness even in the most charitable interpretation is basically being overly careful about using the right term for people.

That's not the same thing as not dehumanizing people by referring to them as an "infestation".

Don't try to hide behind "political incorrectness"

You want to see someone being politically incorrect, watch and learn. Being anti-woke is cool among the fascists today...sad to see it from someone here.

As for "cities destroyed"...I've been to NYC, Detroit, and SF. Neither NYC nor SF have been "destroyed" in any meaningful way. Detroit has, but the destruction there was not caused by drugs or crime, those are SYMPTOMS not CAUSES.

In any case, I'm tired of listening to someone who clearly doesn't read my comment (you've accused me of saying several things here that I said the opposite of and have made false equivalences here again), you can reply again if you want, but I won't see it.

[the_conestoga_guy]

Yeah it's not that I think we absolutely need mainstream corporate businesses all over downtown but they are strong businesses because they offer consumers easy access to goods and usually at cheap prices. There are always alternatives but sometimes what people need, they know they can walk right into a HomeSense, Zara, Canadian Tire, Starbucks, H&M etc and get it. It just offers people more convenient shopping opportunities and can likewise draw people downtown. If Karen and Ken need a new drill and set of car mats for their car and a downtown Canadian Tire is closer than going out to Weber & Forwell Creek Road in Waterloo then that's great. So they go down and get what they need. Then they might decide they're hungry or want a coffee so they wander around and discover a good local restaurant. Then perhaps they notice a bookstore and decide to go check that out. And maybe it's a hot day, so they pick up some ice creams and a cold drink and sit in a park for an hour.

Supporting small businesses is great and definitely preferable, but major chain stores are also necessary. A good downtown should have a good balance between the two. There are many reasons why you need a good mixture. For example not all people can afford to shop for groceries at a place like Marché Leo's and would prefer a FreshCo or Food Basics. Not all people have the patience to discover and shop at small local places, so knowing you can walk into a Canadian Tire to get a specific thing is easy. Or maybe teens going to school only have a bit of money for lunch, so a 3 dollar burger from McDonald's makes more sense than a 6 or 7 dollar burger from Union Burger or some even more expensive place.

Of course getting such places to open up in urban areas is economically risky. For example IKEA only opens stores somewhere if there are certain thresholds met (population being the main criteria), so it is a bit of a waiting game for us at the moment. However I'd still love to see some bigger stores open locations up downtown. Tim Horton's did and it's doing really well. Subway has a shop downtown too and they seem to have been successful. Starbucks is even planning to come back and IMO their coffee is junk compared to some of our great local cafes, but other people enjoy it so they decided to reopen.

Specific to the point about a hardware store, I'm excited to have the new MUT running directly from the Central Station to Swanson's Home Hardware.

It's obviously not as convenient for most of downtown's residents compared to a Canadian Tire built on the Charles Street Terminal land (for example, not recommending this). But I do think it will be beneficial, especially because walking along Victoria (the usual route) is genuinely horrible.

[tomh009]

The homicide rate in Waterloo Region is below the national and provincial average; in Ontario, that average is dropping whereas in Waterloo Region it has been rising sharply.

You are cherry-picking numbers. For example, the article you link to shows a chart with a jump in homicides from 2019 to 2020 (I think from 5 in 2019 to 8 in 2020). But then, right below the chart, it says that there were only two homicides in 2021. That's about 80% lower than the national and provincial rates.

Really, the homicide rates are so low that a single year in our region is not really statistically meaningful. Even for Ontario, a drop from one year to next can't really be considered a trend, need longer-term data for that.

Compare that to a "nice" US city like Portland (45x our homicide rate) or Seattle (20x) -- both about the size of Waterloo Region -- and the reality is that our city (and region) really is safe. We absolutely have problems we need to work on, but the truth is that we don't need to fear for our lives walking downtown.

[nms]

Back to what the area needs: space that encourages a softening of the boundary between the generally private built environment and the public space around it.  Cafés and street architecture are nice in the warmer months, but the colder, darker, winter months don't make for ideal "spending casual time downtown" conditions.

How do countries with similar winter conditions for part of the year do it?

[danbrotherston]

Back to what the area needs: space that encourages a softening of the boundary between the generally private built environment and the public space around it.  Cafés and street architecture are nice in the warmer months, but the colder, darker, winter months don't make for ideal "spending casual time downtown" conditions.

How do countries with similar winter conditions for part of the year do it?

I don't actually agree with this.

Sure, we won't get people spending time outside in the middle of a blizzard, most of our winter days are only cold...and not even that cold. We have a plethora of sunny and ~0 days. Most people would be perfectly happy to come out and enjoy a day like that.

It's such a tiresome trope that people don't go outside in the winter.

In related news, this was an utterly wild news segment for me: (It's in Dutch, only through the magic of auto-generated captions and machine translation can I watch it...also...those things are amazing).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRTpG7X09jY

Leaving aside the absolutely shocking level of reasonableness that the interviewees express it is rather interesting that the expectation is that doors are left open on shops even during the winter, and that people feel unwelcome when doors are not open. It wouldn't strike me as weird to have to open a door to go into a business.

FWIW I have noticed that a few shops in my town do have doors open. It made sense in the summer, but I was surprised when this continued into winter. But it is definitely not as ubiquitous here as it seems in Eindhoven...I'd say maybe 50% of shops are doing this now. (And I am speaking of both the new shopping centre near me, and the city centre).

I know this is only tangentially related to the topic in this thread, but it is interesting how such very different things can be considered "welcoming" vs. "unwelcoming" in a downtown. As always, I think we should have a bold vision and build a good city, and not get too caught up in trying to guess what people want. If we build good interesting places, they'll succeed.

[SF22]

Specific to the point about a hardware store, I'm excited to have the new MUT running directly from the Central Station to Swanson's Home Hardware.

It's obviously not as convenient for most of downtown's residents compared to a Canadian Tire built on the Charles Street Terminal land (for example, not recommending this). But I do think it will be beneficial, especially because walking along Victoria (the usual route) is genuinely horrible.

The Swanson's Home Hardware is legitimately a good store, and I honestly wouldn't have thought to associate it with 'downtown,' but the addition of the MUT will really make it accessible to people living on the other side of the tracks, and generally feel more like a part of the downtown core. Our family is considering becoming a one-car household, and I know that getting to the hardware store easily is a concern for my spouse, and I am going to bring this up with him. With the MUT in place, it'd be a 12-minute bike ride from our home, compared to an 8-minute drive. Hard to argue with that!

[SF22]

Out of curiosity, I've tried to brainstorm a list of the current national chain' that exist in DTK to see what we already have, and what's missing. I totally agree that having more recognizable names downtown will encourage people in the area to stay in the area to shop; I drive myself to the mall right now because it's the only place I can buy good-quality makeup and shoes from brands I recognize.

-Tim Horton's
-William's
-Coffee Culture
-Coffee Time
-Starbucks (coming (again) soon!)
-Shopper's Drug Mart
-The Beer Store
-LCBO
-Scotiabank
-RBC
-TD Canada Trust
-BMO
-CIBC
-Dollarama
-Subway
-Pizza Pizza
-Crabby Joe's
-H&R Block

Interestingly, all of these are located west of Frederick/Benton, and only along King St (none of the chains are located on a side street). So we definitely have banks and coffee covered, but there's not much in terms of chain restaurants, and absolutely nothing re: clothes, shoes, or home goods. There's no grocery store with immediate brand-name recognition (Marche Leos has 6 locations total in ON, I definitely don't count them as a proper 'chain' yet).

Specific things I'd like to see downtown:
-A daycare facility with a good outdoor playground.
-A 'discount' grocery store like a FreshCo or Food Basics.
-A reasonable variety of national chain clothing stores.
-A pet store (something sized like the PetValu at Stanley Park would give lots of variety in a smallish footprint).
-A breakfast joint in the vein of Korner Kitchen.
-Sephora/MAC.
-A fabric store that isn't Len's Mill or Fabricland.
-An ice cream place. Oh my god, please, I just want to take my kid on a walk that ends with ice cream (Matter of Taste is good, but it's gelato and their hours can be limited).

[danbrotherston]

Out of curiosity, I've tried to brainstorm a list of the current national chain' that exist in DTK to see what we already have, and what's missing. I totally agree that having more recognizable names downtown will encourage people in the area to stay in the area to shop; I drive myself to the mall right now because it's the only place I can buy good-quality makeup and shoes from brands I recognize.

-Tim Horton's
-William's
-Coffee Culture
-Coffee Time
-Starbucks (coming (again) soon!)
-Shopper's Drug Mart
-The Beer Store
-LCBO
-Scotiabank
-RBC
-TD Canada Trust
-BMO
-CIBC
-Dollarama
-Subway
-Pizza Pizza
-Crabby Joe's
-H&R Block

Interestingly, all of these are located west of Frederick/Benton, and only along King St (none of the chains are located on a side street). So we definitely have banks and coffee covered, but there's not much in terms of chain restaurants, and absolutely nothing re: clothes, shoes, or home goods. There's no grocery store with immediate brand-name recognition (Marche Leos has 6 locations total in ON, I definitely don't count them as a proper 'chain' yet).

Specific things I'd like to see downtown:
-A daycare facility with a good outdoor playground.
-A 'discount' grocery store like a FreshCo or Food Basics.
-A reasonable variety of national chain clothing stores.
-A pet store (something sized like the PetValu at Stanley Park would give lots of variety in a smallish footprint).
-A breakfast joint in the vein of Korner Kitchen.
-Sephora/MAC.
-A fabric store that isn't Len's Mill or Fabricland.
-An ice cream place. Oh my god, please, I just want to take my kid on a walk that ends with ice cream (Matter of Taste is good, but it's gelato and their hours can be limited).

Restaurants are one thing that I don't really see "chain" as a benefit. Sure, it makes sense for fast food because it's a place you'll often stop while travelling, but independent restaurants are some of the most successful independent retail businesses these days.

I concur with what is missing. I will point out that the region closed Edith Mac daycare....at this point that's probably the most acute problem for families.

We actually have a number of independent grocery stores, none of them are chain stores, but I'd call what we're missing downtown as a supermarket...

Clothing and housewares are definitely missing, as are pet supplies.

FWIW another way to solve some of these problems is to improve transportation. Like we see with Home Hardware, improving transportation means that stores outside DTK are more accessible to residents of DTK.

[SF22]

I've just sent an email to Ren's Pet Depot suggesting that they consider opening a location in DTK. I intend to send emails to other chains that I think might be a good addition to DTK as well. They can't know if there's demand if we don't tell them!

[Joedelay Highhoe]

An inexpensive grocery store would be amazing downtown... Freshco, Food Basics, No Frills, etc. Other than New Shitty Supermarket, everything is so overpriced and branded as "luxury." I don't need luxury groceries... give me that bargain bin chicken, thanks.

[KevinL]

I think a grocer like Central Fresh would be a great fit downtown.

[SF22]

I don't know how much of the Market Square building is being used these days, but it feels like that building footprint/location would be a prime spot to add a supermarket-style grocery store. There's a connected parking garage for people who want to drive, but it's well-connected to the LRT and 5+ bus routes, and well within easy walking distance of a lot of the new condos going up.

A friend of mine lives in Germany, and she was saying that grocery stores inside of train stations is pretty common there, because people get off the train on their way home and can easily grab a few things they need for dinner. I'm not sure the concept totally fits Kitchener currently, but I have to say I'm really intrigued by the idea.

[neonjoe]

I don't know how much of the Market Square building is being used these days, but it feels like that building footprint/location would be a prime spot to add a supermarket-style grocery store. There's a connected parking garage for people who want to drive, but it's well-connected to the LRT and 5+ bus routes, and well within easy walking distance of a lot of the new condos going up.

A friend of mine lives in Germany, and she was saying that grocery stores inside of train stations is pretty common there, because people get off the train on their way home and can easily grab a few things they need for dinner. I'm not sure the concept totally fits Kitchener currently, but I have to say I'm really intrigued by the idea.

The basement level of Market Square used to be home to a Zehrs.

[jamincan]

U-Haul is a national chain downtown. It's got an unfortunate street presence, but I suppose it's useful as more people move to DTK.

[TMKM94]

There is also Galito's flame grilled chicken, Double Double Pizza, and Urban Burger,