Urban Costco in Vancouver
Pertaining to yesterday’s post about encouraging big box stores to open urban outlets if and only if they fit themselves into physical structures that are suitably urban in nature, a reader sent me this article about an urbanist Costco in Vancouver:
The new store is a feat of engineering and an unusual mix of uses. It is built in a hole bordered by GM Place, the Georgia viaduct and the escarpment on the eastern end of Vancouver’s downtown. The 127,000-square-foot store, built by Concord Pacific, has two floors of parking below it, two floors of parking above it, and then, above that, another four towers of residential condos with 900 units. [...] To appeal to what is expected to be a slightly higher proportion of downtown shoppers, the store stocks a bigger variety of home-ready meals — chicken parmigiana, prawns and pasta, souvlaki, lasagna, and the like — electronics and leather goods, said Ross. [...]
The 700 parking spots will cost $2 for two hours, but in an effort to keep out downtown office workers, the system requires parkers to return to the lot every two hours. Concord Pacific has also incorporated an elevator and stairway that connect the store to the Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain station above it.
This sounds good to me. It’s uncontroversial, of course, that cities need supermarkets. But in DC, unfortunately, a lot of our supermarkets are basically suburban strip mall structures just plopped down into the city — perhaps with less parking than you’d otherwise see. Much better is to do what’s suggested in this article, or something like my new building where many floors of apartments are located directly above a Safeway.
Being within walking distance of a supermarket is a major facilitator of walkable urbanism, just like being within walking distance of a rail station. But like rail stations, major retail destinations like supermarkets (or a Costco) are bound to be somewhat rare. Consequently, it’s important to maximize the residential density in their immediate vicinity. Since it’s often also nice to put a supermarket right by a rail station, it’s an especially tragic lost opportunity when you see something like the strip mall-style Safeway (one-story windowless structure adjacent to an open air parking lot) located right by the Waterfront-SEU Metro station on the Green Line.
50 Responses to “Urban Costco in Vancouver”
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October 27th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Funnily enough after nearly a year in Vancouver I only saw this store yesterday. It really is in “a hole in the ground” and is not the usual eye-sore that these kind of places can be.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
It sounds very similar to how the Pentagon City Costco was built, as well as how it’s managed today.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Oh, just give up and move to Phoenix!
October 27th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Matt, there’s no need to venture so far from home if you’re looking for a crappy suburban-style supermarket in an urban location. The ultra-craptastic Giant at 7th and P fits the bill perfectly.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
or something like my new building where many floors of apartments are located directly above a Safeway.
Hey, that’s my grocery store, too! When I tell out-of-towners that I run into the most powerful people in the world all the time in DC, I bet they’re thinking “Joe Lieberman in Georgetown”, not “Matt Yglesias grabbing a cantaloupe.” But still, that’s pretty cool.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
If you want to talk about integrating chain retail in cities, then the better example is Tesco Metro, Sainsbury Local, etc. Tesco is doing small, urban grocery stores (Fresh & Easy) in the western US now. In London, you’ll usually find them on the ground floor of 3-4 storey buildings.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
At least there are some supermarkets and other types of retail in central DC these days. I remember the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, when there was truly next to nothing.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Waiting for Mixner to arrive to inform us that such a store cannot exist and therefore does not exist in Vancouver or anywhere else. Stores can only exist in the middle of large exurban parking lots. It is known.
Not Really
PS - there is a similarly-built Dominicks* in downtown Chicago.
* Chicago grocery chain; owned by Safeway from about 5 year ago IIRC
October 27th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
They are looking to build an Ikea in Somerville, MA, which is fairly urban. However, the residents are rightfully worried about traffic congestion:
Specific big retailers like Home Depot and Ikea probably require car travel (and most likely large car travel) since people most likely are purchasing much larger items than they would at Costco or even a Best Buy.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I can tell you’re a single guy. No one who shops for a family thinks realistically about walking to the grocery store — there’s just too much to carry. Back before there were cars women had to buy groceries pretty much every day (there was no refrigeration either) or brought along handcarts or (if they lived out in the country) horses and wagons.
People want to park their cars at the store because they use their cars to transport the groceries, not because the stores are too far away from home. Of course, this doesn’t apply to convenience stores (where people often buy carryable amounts of stuff), but that’s not what you’re talking about.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Congratulations to Costco for bringing the benefits of Big Box, bulk-purchase, giant-corporation chain store shopping to the people of Vancouver, complete with four floors of parking to encourage lots of cars.
Still not sure how this is supposed to be consistent with the goals and principles of “new urbanism,” however.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Most of the grocery stores in DC come with tons of parking; the Van Ness Giant, Tivoli Giant, all the Whole Foodses, Trader Joes, Wisconsin Giant, the new Teeter, Spanish Safeway, Social Safeway - all have free parking, and only the TJ’s ever even comes close to capacity (but don’t fret; the Bethesda one has plenty). In a city where land isn’t especially scarce (sure there’s a 10-floor limit, but very few buildings outside of the downtown core approach it; not the way you have 18-story apartment towers on West End Avenue or Washington Heights), we’ve shown a clear preference for large supermarkets over bodega-style places (or even small Macgruder’s-style stores). Quite a few of those supermarkets, incidentally, serve as one of the destination retailers around Metro stations (Tenley, Foggy, Columbia Heights, Van Ness - Bethesda and Clarendon, too).
October 27th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Mixner,
I think what this has to do with urbanism is that it is fact that people want the convenience of big-box. No matter how much I wish it wer enot so, big-box is well liked. Heck, I am an implacable foe, but every once in a while I find myself at the Megalo Mart in my city.
So, teh question then becomes, do you allow it out on the fringe of the city or in the centre where many more people live?
Vancouver has been having this debate for 10 years and is resolving it by allowing stores to either build small-box (a Home Depot with very little parking) or big box in an urbanist mindset, a la the Costco above.
New urbanism should not be, in my opinion, an attempt to shove a way of living down people’s throats but to find out what people like and then trying to deliver that. So, one of the 100,000 + who live downtown in Vancouver do not have to drive for 30 minutes to go to a Costco, if they want to. Or, in the alternate, they can go to one of the 10 or so smaller supermarkets scattered throughout the downtown peninsula.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
That reminds me quite a bit of the Sainsbury’s supermarket in Camden, North London, which is squeezed between two roads and a canal. It doesn’t have anything above the store, it’s true, but they did manage to squeeze some new housing on the canalside, and for a huge store (by the standards of the day in the UK), it takes up very little space thanks to the underground parking. Of course it helps that lots of people don’t drive in London and it’s right next to the tube station and a dozen bus routes.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
The new complex planned at Foggy Bottom (on GW’s campus, where the old hospital was razed)will have the right urban mix of a supermarket on the bottom floor, and office space, residential space and parking space all integral. And of course the metro is across the street. There was a good deal of opposition from the residents of Foggy Bottom, but their complaints lead to better urban planning.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
> Still not sure how this is supposed to
> be consistent with the goals and principles
> of “new urbanism,” however
Basic projection by Mixner. Exurbanites want to put everyone into the same straightjacket as themselves so they are all exactly alike and there is no discomfort. Urbanites (and urbanists) want to create as much flexiblity as possible so that everyone can do their own thing. Walk to Costco and push the new stuff home on a cart? Sure. Pay for delivery? Sure. Take a GoCar for 1 hour, pick it up and drive it home? Sure. Have your brother from the burbs stop by with the giant SUV? Sure. Hire 7 homeless guys to carry it home on their heads? Sure. Note the various OPTIONS that the centrally-located store with parking AND street access provides. Try walking from Mixner’s tract mansion to his local supercenter and see how far you get before you are killed or arrested (I have survived such walks in exurban Naperville but I am a very savvy, city-trained pedestrian).
Such a way of life does involve greater discomfort (and even risk!) than the bland exurban peas-in-a-pod way, but to the urbanites it also provides greater richness of experience.
Not Really
By the way Mixner - when I lived in Chicago I used trains for about 70% of my transit and ALSO owned a car. I thought that wasn’t possible?
October 27th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Grocery and other stores integrated with apartment/condo and underground or otherwise integrated high density parking seem to be getting popular in the Puget Sound area. And as noted by Not Really there’s a lot of additional ways to deal with transport.
In fact, I fairly regularly take advantage of either store vehicle rental or one day van/truck rentals those few times a year when I decide to buy something that won’t fit on the motorcycle or in the Prius. Costs a hell of a lot less than having 90% more vehicle than I need for the 4-6 times a year I might need it for a couple of hours at a time.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Of course, there was the time I carried a 70lb slab of pastry marble from a store in downtown Boston to Arlington using the MBTA. That was a bit much - but it worked…
October 27th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
“Not Really”
That was pretty incoherent, wasn’t it?
New urbanism is supposed to be about “walkable neighborhoods” with public spaces, a diverse range of small independent shops and restaurants, and “transit-oriented development,” where cars are relatively rare and the streets are filled with pedestrians and bike riders. Not giant corporate chain stores with 700-car parking garages.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Most of the rest of the developed world is way ahead of the US on this.
For example, I spend a lot of time in Santiago Chile where many of the supermarkets are as described in Vancouver. They are multilevel with moving sidewalk-type escalators that move between floors and grocery cart wheels that grip the moving escalators to keep them from sliding down.
In fact, directly across Avenida Kennedy from my mother-in-law’s condo in Santiago there is a big shopping complex that has a Home Depot in the basement, a car dealership on the next level up (they bring the cars up by freight elevator), above that is a big supuermarket, and there is a large medical tower rising an additional 20 floors above that.
As for getting your food home sans auto? All the grocery stores in Santiago have a Taxi queue area just like at the airport. You walk out with your cart full of groceries and there is a row of taxi drivers ready to load it in your trunk. For the little old lady types who go shopping, they have one of the bagger kids walk their cart out to the taxis and load up the groceries for a small tip, the taxi then drives the shopper home, and the doorman to the apartment building calls one of the building staff to cart the groceries up to the apartment. A $0.50 tip at each step of the process makes it work smoothly.
No need for smart cars, truck rentals, bike trailers, etc. There are always a million taxis cruising around looking for the work.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Mixner: “New urbanism is supposed to be about…”
I think you meant, “New urbanism is obviously supposed to be about…”. If you’re going to pull strawmen out of thin air, you could at least have the decency to use the “Mixner keyword” so I can safely ignore them.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
> In fact, directly across Avenida Kennedy from my
> mother-in-law’s condo in Santiago there is a big shopping
> complex that has a Home Depot in the basement, a car
> dealership on the next level up (they bring the cars up by
> freight elevator), above that is a big supuermarket, and
> there is a large medical tower rising an additional 20
> floors above that.
>
> As for getting your food home sans auto? All the grocery
> stores in Santiago have a Taxi queue area just like at the
> airport. You walk out with your cart full of groceries and
> there is a row of taxi drivers ready to load it in your
> trunk.
One of the real advantages of this type of arrangement is for the elderly. My father had switched between city and suburb several times in his life, finally settling in the exurbs, then moved to a condo in the city upon retirement. When he developed some health problems and couldn’t drive any more* he found that the systems available in the central city (as you describe) allowed him to remain independent while still obtaining all his living requirements. Exactly the opposite of friends/family who have moved to isolated exurban “retirement villages” and found themselves at the mercy of the staff and especially the lone staff bus driver.
Not Really
* Except for brief periods of an hour or so in daylight. Oops - living the central city and still owning an automobile? Not possible!
October 27th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Try walking from Mixner’s tract mansion to his local supercenter
Walk? I have one of those little motorized carts to support my 300lb frame.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
This concept works, but the demographics in the area has to support such a retail model. I know nothing of this area, so I do not know, but I am sure CostCo did the necessary studies to support the cost for such a thing or they received a very large “Tenant Allowance”/government tax break.
As a retail developer and having been doing this for almost 20 years, I can make a few assumptions:
> This was probably some sort of TIF district or other subsidy that Canada offers to attract retailers, because the cost would be very high for this structure…see below.
> I am sure the Planning and Zoning of Vancouver required the “mix use”, i.e. the condo’s. I assume this since most developers are not experts in both retail and residential and we actually hate mixed use developments…they are much harder to sell.
> Doing this sort of building is very cost prohibitive. For a standard parking garage, say around 300+ spots, the cost is $2900 per stall (in the US). Given that half is below ground and the other half is above the store, the costs would increase another $300 - $600.
Matt, I have some closing thoughts regarding your opinions on retail and new urbanism. I have been reading your blog here and over at the Atlantic and you have some good ideas, but they need to be framed better or rather fleshed out. I believe the only way to really allow big box retailers the greatest chance of success in urban areas is to partner with the respective communities transportation jurisdiction. Mass transit and a developer MUST partner. The medium income in urban areas is usually much lower than retailers want, so to offset that hit, they will need more foot traffic and mass transit would be the only way to nullify that medium income hit. I would be happy to talk more about if you want. just shoot me an email.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
the costco in san francisco was the first thing i thought of when you brought this up. it’s been there for years, has a parking garage underneath (which i use when i go to sfmoma, but no matter where i’m going in sf, i can walk), and is only a few blocks from bart and muni underground. not to mention the muni bus. it’s a pretty good setup.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
You might be interested in another project around here that looks like it’s going to happen.
Vertical Urban Farms or high rise greenhouses.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
You’re clearly not gong to give up on this box store in city blither.
I just hope all civic minded people come out to fight against your breed.
Long live Jane Jacobs:
‘It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.’
October 27th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Great. So now even downtown areas are being invaded by big box corporatism. Does anyone seriously believe Costco has anything to do with livable cities and sustainability? It’s all about feeding the beast, consumerism run wild, encouraging people to buy more and more useless shit.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
An oft-neglected portion of the discussion is that open air parking lots wreck havoc on drainage–large rainstorms have to flow over the parking lot and into the sewer/drainage system instead of any of the water being absorbed by green space.
The big box stores will continue to exist (in some manner)–why not have them centrally located (instead of on the periphery of a city where they encourage further growth away from the center) AND have more green space as a result.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
The big box stores will continue to exist (in some manner)–why not have them centrally located (instead of on the periphery of a city where they encourage further growth away from the center) AND have more green space as a result.
There are six Costcos in Vancouver. You’d prefer all six of them were centrally located, would you? Even just the one that is already downtown must be generating a huge amount of additional traffic to fill its 700-car parking garage. And I wonder how many smaller, independent downtown retailers it has put out of business, or prevented from opening in the first place, because they can’t compete with it on price or selection. Costco epitomizes everything that “walkable urbanism” is supposed to be against. Welcome to the dark side.
October 27th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
NB: Mixner knows nothing about Vancouver. He doesn’t get out much.
October 27th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
NB: DMonteith is seriously ill and needs his medication.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
NB: Mixner knows nothing about anything. He really doesn’t get out much, and gets amusingly defensive when we talk about The Big Outside.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
If you want a supermarket, it would be nice to have one that didn’t charge $50 per annum just to walk in the door, and offered perishables in less than industrial quantities
October 28th, 2008 at 11:52 am
If talking urban retail, you should be looking for examples in the king of all urban areas - NYC. Start the tour with Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn: three floors of retail including a 180,000 SF Target store were built directly OVER (and tied to) the 3rd largest transportation hub in the city. Then the whole thing was topped with an office building.
Developments like this paved the way for big-box stores to abandon their suburban prototypes and cater to urban environs and customers. Ten years ago you would have been hard pressed to convince a big-box store like Target to have a multi-level store with NO ground floor presence and minimal parking. Todaym, several of the chains top selling stores are now in the NYC area and have no resmeblance to their suburban stores.
For the ultimate in urban retail, look at East River Plaza. Located on a blighted 6-acre site that was once home to an enormous wire factory, this project has no less than FIVE levels of retail and EIGHT Decks of parking. Though there is no subway access, the site is serviced by bus and is directly accessible from the FDR drive. By building vertically, this center will bring a suburban style experience to the city without the related sprawl and with the requisite urban density. Rumopr has it that residential is planned in the future.
October 28th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Maybe it is a trend with Costco. They put a very nice store just a few blocks from downtown Tijuana, Mexico. Same old big parking lot, but, still, an easy walk for those without a car.
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