Comment 78918

By jason (registered) | Posted June 26, 2012 at 09:44:20 in reply to Comment 78887

Some real-life evidence from my own experience: Fri night my wife and I enjoyed dinner on Locke S, a show at Hamilton Place, a post-show treat at Radius and capped the night with a waterfront stroll. We live a 3 minute walk from the proposed Queen/King LRT station. Other than the waterfront, we live less than a 15 minute walk from each destination we attended that night. Yet we drove.

Why? Walking along King or Main West dressed reasonably nice and wanting to enjoy conversation just doesn't work. That 10-12 minute walk to Hamilton Place feels like an eternity. Nothing like walking Locke or Queen/College etc... in TO. During our travels we chatted about how nice it would be someday to walk around the corner to the LRT and head to the show, walk around downtown to a late night cafe, perhaps take the N/S LRT up to the water, and back home.
Our auto trip on Main St that night was purely induced by the horrendous transportation network that either requires a lot of back street bobbing and weaving, or hearty souls who don't mind a romantic anniversary evening chat taking place an elbows width from reckless drivers and roaring transport trucks. Walking from Hamilton Place to Radius, followed by a more meandering Durand stroll back to Hamilton Place for our car was a very pleasant walk, as was the waterfront stroll. But until we decide we want downtown to be a people place, folks will opt for their car far more than they should when coming from Kirkendall, Strathcona and other surrounding neighbourhoods into the downtown core.

I read with interest today Paul Wilson's piece about Molinaro possibly developing a condo tower at Main and Bay one of these years. He mentions their fine work in downtown Burlington. Sad to say, we won't see a nice mixed-use tower with street front cafes like they have in Burlington. What developer would dream of trying urban, street front uses on Main?

Comment edited by jason on 2012-06-26 09:44:45

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