I'm all for more housing, but the ground-floor retail seems to sit vacant at least where I am. There's only so many coffee shops and breakfast/lunch diners that one neighborhood can support. It'd be nice if some of that space could be for accessible apartments, maybe bike storage, or anything that would actually get used instead of just vacant retail space with soaped-up windows.
Of course you can also have shoe stores, barbers, maker spaces, furniture stores, plumbing supplies, etc. But we have moved to megastores. We want to go to a single million square meter store that stocks everything. Or we just order stuff online.
I'd actually like see entrepreneurs take a run at that retail space. It would be cool to live in a place with a produce stand on the ground floor and a deli around the corner with a small DMV office in between. It would be nice to see an intelligent analysis on why your area can't seem to fill up that retail space. Ditto some initiative to change the situation.
Sometimes economies of scale seem to favor three giant guitar stores versus 15 small ones. It would be fun to see people who are smart enough to make small neighborhood shops competitive.
> I'd actually like see entrepreneurs take a run at that retail space.
Well of course. So would those entrepreneurs. Problem is that rent is usually way too high to for a shoe store or makerspace to break even. Forget plumbing supplies. There usually isn’t easy parking for a truck, and you need lots of room for a plumbing supply store.
These spaces are normally mandated by local regulations, so whether or not they are economically viable is irrelevant.
Yes, the planning commissions approve these developments with the requirement for "ground floor retail" but the demand doesn't seem to be there, at least not at the rents being asked.
If they would truly rent these places out at what the market will pay, that would be fine and I'd love to see what ideas people had to use that space. But seeing as how most of it remains vacant, that must not be happening.
I'd be interested to know how the vacancy rate compares on the residential units vs the commercial units.
It seems obvious that if any retail space could be converted to living quarters and make more money, somebody would pay the commercial rent and do the conversion. Except, of course, where this is barred by government.
> I'd actually like see entrepreneurs take a run at that retail space.
You can't reasonably expect personal investment in a venture that directly competes with Amazon. My town is littered with neighborhood grocery stores that have been shuttered longer than I have been alive (and I am nearing retirement).
I have seen food halls that vaguely work in Chicago, and my regional city has business incubators that reduce the cost of starting a business.
That only goes so far, though. Modern commerce has hollowed out much commercial real estate.
I live in a former socialist country, where ground-level apartments were a thing even in larger buildings... nowadays people don't like them, because there is usually a lot of foot traffic around such buildings, and nobody wants to live in an apartment where anyone can walk right by the window and see inside the apartment (+ security risks).
