Comment 79211

By Borrelli (registered) - website | Posted July 05, 2012 at 11:05:29 in reply to Comment 79202

What they keep hearing, however, is that a lot of people don't want to move downtown if they can't enjoy the convenience of a full-service grocery store. That, in turn, is hurting the market for downtown condo / apartment developments.

A lot of people don't want to move downtown for a lot of reasons: We're facing closing schools, institutional employers are leaving, some people think it's a social services ghetto, and the existing mix of residents is often cited, too. Yet somehow a taxpayer subsidized Sobeys Urban Fresh is going to be the spark to change that?

Sorry Ryan, I follow you down the rabbit hole most of the time, but I still see this more as desperately chasing potential development dollars based on the word of self-interested actors. Of course developers are supportive of a subsidy that makes it easier for them to market condos--because it's totally risk-free for them.

And though this $650k has been framed as relative peanuts, I would much prefer that money go into a bigger, well thought through development opportunity than this half-baked plan to entice Sobeys, Loblaws or Metro to open a store that they don't think they currently run profitably.

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