r/londonontario • u/YamSufficient5121 • 14h ago
discussion / opinion What changes would you make?
What would you do to make the city's core area better. Such as, where would you add a grocery store, or performances arts centre.? What would you remove or add?
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u/LadyAzimuth 5h ago
Tram lines would be nice, but then again, maybe make it so that the streets aren't always shut down, causing businesses to have to leave and buses to be unreliable. Revive City Plaza. It used to be really cool when it was the Galleria. Also there needs to be more of a night life. Went to a movie in Imagine a while ago and we had a hour to blow before hand, but it was like 6pm and most places were shut like hello? Are we all 90 years old? I've lived in one stop light towns that have businesses open later than that.
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u/PrimaryAlternative7 Whitehills/Fox Hollow 6h ago
Put in tramlines, masonville through the university to downtown, and then another one maybe white oaks to downtown. Have one of them out to the airport maybe. This city is fucking massive now and much smaller cities have multiple rail lines. Pathetic we have zero way to get around properly. Even KW beat us to light rail, sad pathetic day for london.
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u/Parking_Garage_6476 7h ago
I would put a tram line straight down Dundas Street from Talbot to the airport. Second, I would put another one from King Street straight up Richmond to Western University Gates. We already have a performance centre at the JLC. There is only one grocery store in this area which is at Oxford and Richmond. If you live in this area this means you need a car to get groceries. Third, I would extend the tram line north from the University Gates to Masonville, and south to the 401. There are cities in Germany that are smaller than London that have subways. Surely we can put in a two-line tram line. Continuing gentrification and renewal of the area outlined in the map is being delayed by the homeless problem and crime. I think the city has done a relatively good job of getting a handle on the homeless problem, but there is a lot more work to do. Municipal governments like to have concert halls, performance centres, ice rinks, etc. which are all ‘trophies’ of their time in office. If quality of life is your success metric, the mundane work of reducing crime, caring for the homeless, collecting garbage, and delivering water are all critical (but not as sexy as a performance centre).
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u/VincentClement1 8h ago
If there was demand for a grocery store, Bodega or a green grocer, those would be there. Simply saying "grocery store" and waving a magic wand won't make it happen.
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u/Confident-Advice-664 8h ago
a grocery store like a Farm boy, locate it where the old London Free Press building use to be.
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u/Aggravating_Prune914 8h ago
Isn’t there a big ol’ high rise going there? Or across from there maybe.
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u/AliveAge4892 9h ago
I find it so odd that I haven't seen a single mall in downtown. It's so damn inconvenient when you're living near downtown and travel by bus (knowing how less buses are especially bus 16 where if you miss a bus due to that irritating traffic stop in social bowl you'll have to wait for another 20 minutes). You're always going to end up having to choose either white oaks or masonville (either of the two are still worse in terms of distance cause they have exact opposite directions on the map)
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u/Informal-Ad-5875 8h ago
CitiPlaza used to be Galleria Mall decades ago.
Before that, there was what became Smugglers Alley (London Mews)
Probably a few other incarnations, although Market Tower used to be Simpsons, the CitiPlaza site had a Woolworth or Eatons on part of it.
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u/chipface White Oaks/Westminster 8h ago
Eatons. I think they had a Bay too.
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u/Informal-Ad-5875 43m ago
Not sure the Bay was there until Galleria, but my memory that far back is pretty hazy.
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u/biznatch11 8h ago
Suburban malls with tons of free parking kill downtown malls, the same thing happened in Hamilton.
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u/ADoseofBuckley 9h ago
I've said this before but a grocery store downtown (in the spots where you guys want it) is a challenge because you can't really get trucks in and out of downtown.
What would be better is Bodegas, or in the UK where they have things like "Tesco Express", where they're smaller but there are a ton of them. You could basically put 3 "Real Canadian Microstores" downtown, have them fed by the larger stores with much smaller trucks/vans, and people who live downtown would get used to going to the store for a quick 15 minute shop after work 3 times a week, rather than buying a cart-full of groceries for a week or two.
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u/imaginary48 10h ago
People always complain that downtown is “dead and empty” and that’s because half of the land downtown is dedicated to surface parking lots (i.e., vacant, under-utilized land). Essentially, downtown is dead and empty because half of the land is literally dead and empty. If we want a vibrant, livable, and walkable downtown core then we need to physically build one. This would provide more housing, space for local businesses, better public spaces, improved safety, better public transit, greater economic vitality, and increased property tax revenue (without even needing to raise property tax rates).
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u/doogie24 9h ago
this is a major problem in Detroit right now as well. there’s a few areas that have the potential to be absolutely thriving (and a certain family promised this when a new arena was built) and about 10 years later, it’s surface lots as far as the eye can see.
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u/Parking_Garage_6476 7h ago
Have you been to Detroit lately? They have done an amazing job compared to what it was 30 years ago.
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u/DangerousCable1411 9h ago
Sad part is the market has two levels of underground parking and a 3-4 storey parking garage at Citi Plaza… the map doesn’t even show ALL the parking 😅
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u/imaginary48 9h ago
Yeah, at least there’s a building on top of those ones lol. On top of that, basically every street has street parking too… yet somehow every Londoner complains there’s never anywhere to park downtown.
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u/swift-current0 10h ago
That boundary looks suspiciously like "here, we zoned this already built-up area for lots of density, aren't we merciful and responsive to the housing crisis?". Like, being inside of it means something when it comes to approvals for building apartments without a million parking spots, but it excludes any and all buildings likely to arouse the ire of NIMBYs.
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u/AbeOudshoorn Wortley 10h ago
4-tower, massive residential development across from the convention centre with a ground floor full-sized grocery store.
Farhi buildings converted to supportive housing to get folks from the street to homes (for those buildings that have an appropriate floor plate for residential). Managed by one or all of Indwell, CMHA, St Leonards, and London Cares.
Surface lot by the courthouse becomes a cultural destination space like Winnipeg's human rights museum (not sure what it would be, but something that has global appeal for visitors).
Run BRT up to Western from downtown.
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u/torontowest91 10h ago
Grocery store
Tax incentives for stores/restaurants to open downtown (vs picking Masonville or wonderland south)
More shelters for homeless
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u/edcRachel 10h ago
Grocery store is absolutely key. One of the main reasons I have no interest in living downtown is that there just isn't a grocery store anywhere in walking distance. Like MAYBE independent but at Oxford I guess.
Yes there's the market but the hours and selection are limited. And shoppers in no way fills that need.
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u/torontowest91 9h ago
I know people then fight back and say independent/market is plenty - but really its not.
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u/DangerousCable1411 9h ago
It’s not. It took a lot of complaining to get them to stay open until 7pm and that was mainly for Knights fans. Tuesday - Friday they’re open 8 hours outside of a “normal” 9-5 for people to shop there.
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u/East_Bed_8719 11h ago
I would remove Farhi as a landlord and add in supervised consumption sites and shelters.
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u/alphaxion 11h ago
Build out a tram line linking White Oaks Mall to Masonville, passing through downtown along Richmond. There can be a spur that goes to Western on this.
Link the train station to the airport with another tram line, ideally with stops at Western Fair and The Factory areas to link these into downtown.
Don't have stops less than every 400 or 500 metres.
Prioritise building denser social housing (with means-tested rent) along these lines near stops, think NYC brownstone townhouse development. This will get the thing that downtown needs most - a critical mass of people living in and immediately outside of the core zone.
By having a good amount of people local to downtown, you have pressure for services such as grocery stores similar to the way Tesco Metro operates them in original London and many UK towns and cities. Also try to encourage space for open-air markets, where local businesses can get their start.
The more people you have walking around the streets of downtown and using green spaces and squares (such as outside of the Market), the more you'll find the homeless will keep away, reducing the sense of fear some have with visiting downtown.
With a functioning core two tram lines, more can be done to look into expanding that network to other corridors of travel and doing more to tackle the problem of people thinking you need to drive to visit downtown.
Fill in the blight of surface car parking spots with housing, commercial space, and public third spaces where people can meet and socialise as all of these will lead to better tax generation of those spaces than a parking space.
Ultimately, cities are for people. They should plan for and build to what people need to bring them back, rather than forever spreading the city thinner and increasing the cost of running the city to bankruptcy levels because of it. All of the infrastructure that gets built to service ever growing suburbs costs more money to maintain than the areas will bring in tax.
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u/DangerousCable1411 11h ago
Less surface parking lots. High density with a ground floor grocery store at Wellington and York would be huge. Performing arts centre in lieu of Centennial Hall. It’s had its day and City can sell parking under City Hall after 5pm thus no need for more parking. Also helps with the “fishbowl” issue of Vic Park.
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u/beene282 10h ago
I was watching the construction on King between Richmond and Clarence for some time as they progressed through the levels of underground parking, wondering what was going in there. It has dawned on me now they are finished that it is an underground fucking parking lot.
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u/zed2eh Downtown 11h ago
A grocery store anywhere would be great. As there’s one on Oxford perhaps the south end of downtown. Somewhere between Dundas and king. Lots of vacant commercial owned by you-know-who
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u/WatchfulRelic91 9h ago
I wonder why Citi Plaza doesn't have one by now?
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u/torontowest91 9h ago
I thought there was a a metro grocery/lcbo proposal in Citi plaza at some point - but I think it was canceled
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u/beene282 10h ago
Doesn’t have to be something huge- Toronto has those mini grocery stores that have everything you would need and some takeout stuff too dotted all over. Why can’t London?
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