We should keep our options open on the new library
(Originally Printed in the Guelph Mercury, “Sightlines” - by Unto Kihlanki )
This past Monday, largely due to the efforts of Coun. Mike Salisbury, Guelph city council decided not to turn the city’s recently acquired building at 152-158 Wyndham St. into a parking lot, at least not yet. They voted to investigate the option of renovating it for other possible interim uses while we wait for the day, perhaps quite distant, when it is slated to become part of the proposed new central library.
Good for our council. The merchants currently located along Wyndham must be breathing a long collective sigh of relief. A gaping hole in the fabric of the existing frontage is the last thing they need now, as they struggle to maintain a semblance of commercial vitality on their street.
Finding an active use for the building has to be preferable to demolition; returning it to a retail use would be best because it would support the retail nature of the street, which, I’m assuming, is still an important objective.
But why the rush to demolish in the first place? Apparently, city staff had not even considered other options. They wanted to spend $400,000 now, rather than a few thousand on renovations to try to find new tenants. That could only make financial sense if the need to clear the site were a short-term certainty. It isn’t; the start of actual construction of the library is likely to take years before it happens, if it ever happens.
Furthermore, demolition would make it more difficult for our next council to modify the Baker Street redevelopment design concept, should it choose to do so. Our future councils need maximum freedom to respond to contemporary circumstances as they unfold, not to be impeded, unnecessarily, by the unfulfilled ambitions of previous councils.
Many people feel it is unfortunate that the library project has been postponed. I don’t know; maybe they are right. After all, design projects are never perfect, and at some point we need to just get on with the work of building. And I do agree that a new library is a worthwhile project for the city to undertake.
But, I also think that the current design scheme for the Baker Street redevelopment project is seriously flawed. Readers of this column may remember that when the various design options were under evaluation I weighed in against the present proposal, preferring the ones that would place the library on Baker Street instead, while keeping the tradition of commercial frontage along Wyndham intact.
I have never been convinced by the urban design rationale put forward by the city’s consultants to justify the extreme measure of expropriation. The idea that the new library will serve as a “second anchor” for the Wyndham Street retail corridor, along with the new city hall on the south, is seductive but fanciful.
The concept of reinforcing a retail corridor by placing anchor tenants at the ends is born of shopping mall design. It works because the major retailers that are typically used as “anchors” draw more shoppers to the smaller shops that lie between them than they could draw on their own.
But, imagining that you can simply substitute a library for a major national retailer to serve as a retail anchor is to misunderstand the concept completely. Perhaps we should test the idea by outbidding Sears for their spot at the Stone Road Mall, and offering to put the new library there; but I doubt that the mall would go for it, even if we offered twice what Sears is willing to pay. The owners are not that naive.
While it is true that the library would draw new traffic to the street and that many of the people would be the ones that the store owners are trying to attract, they are not likely to be in the same shopping mood as they are when they decide to pay a visit to a major retailer. And that is the critical difference.
To our city staff and politicians, it may seem like a daunting task to try to find a major national retailer to locate on Wyndham Street; it may be politically unappealing to many of them compared to the easy sell of a new library. But if we are serious about maintaining the commercial vitality of our main downtown shopping street, it deserves consideration.
Like it or not, since we now have additional time, and some additional property to work with, we might as well take full advantage to make sure we undertake the best possible project, when we eventually can build it. Getting this right is the key to the successful revitalization of the downtown commercial core, it is extremely important.