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Anothre threat to downtown
If we needed another example of why municipal politicians don’t get as much sleep as they might (and probably aren’t paid near as much as they should), take the proposal reported on in our story on page 11 - to put a branch of TD Canada Trust on the north end of the Vince’s/Shoppers plaza. A difficult question with a lot of different facets to it, and it’s small wonder the vote in the end was divided.
The first point of debate is that when the plaza was initially contemplated, the gentlemen from Vince’s painted a picture with three elements: Vince’s, welcomed as a competitor to Zehrs (although not much of a competitor price-wise, as it turned out); Shoppers Drug Mart (relocated from downtown); and a third building of several storeys in the north end, to be the site of apartments above and some commercial or professional tenants below.
Vince’s opened, Shoppers opened, but nothing happened to the north. Months and years went by, and finally the eyesore of dirt and weeds was cleaned up, but no third building materialized. When asked why, the developers said they hadn’t found the main-floor tenants that would fund the rest of the building; one suspects they really weren’t looking very hard, focussing on making a success of the two businesses already in the plaza.
Now at last we have a tenant, but there’s no mention of a multi-storey building; the residential component has been abandoned. In a community whose residential expansion is considerably fettered by Oakridges Moraine and Greenbelt legislation, where infill is the only real way to let our population grow, it seems a shame to let any residential possibility be tossed away so easily.
The other issue is the fear that TD’s establishment of a second branch in town is only temporary, that it won’t be long before the downtown branch shuts its doors. When Shoppers shifted southward, for a time it maintained a reduced version at its old site, but after a while that quietly went away. Now there’s a new pharmacy in the same place, ironically a reincarnation of one that had stood across Brock Street from the TD Bank. A pharmacy had occupied that space for decades - until last month.
Now there are far too many empty spaces along Brock Street, some which have been unoccupied for years. The last thing Uxbridge needs is a vacancy on one of its major intersections. On the one hand, it’s hard to deny TD the opportunity to go wherever it wants, especially when two other major banks - RBC and Scotia Bank - are already in the Toronto Street South corridor. And it’s about time something, anything, occupied the northern end of the Vince’s plaza.
But Councillors Northeast and Molloy are right to worry about the long-term cost to the downtown, and it’s a bit strange that the two most vocal proponents of a strong downtown are from rural wards, resident in the hamlets of Goodwood and Zephyr respectively, rather than the two men who represent Brock Street on council.
If TD does indeed abandon downtown in a few years, saying “I told you so” won’t really do much good at all.
July 14, 2011
