Broadway 360 Study Area
The land use open house was a great success. If you weren’t able to attend you can still ‘have your say’ here in the comments. You can see the documents that were presented at the open house. They are listed here, but are also available from the documents tab in the menu at the top of the page.
- Presentation – B360 Jan 19 2012
The slides from the Land Use Open House presentation on January 19, 2012. - B360 – Design Guidelines (Detailed Handout)
- B360 FAQs Jan 19 2012
- B5B Zoning District – Current
- B5B to B5 – Comparative Table
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I think the type of successful community that Broadway has been since it was redeveloped almost 30 years ago, is one that is people driven rather than architecture driven. Though heritage buildings provide a basic element, with new construction a sort of stylized ambience can be built, but the hollow act of simply inserting nice looking buildings won’t prove fruitful for the continued success of the district in the long term.
My belief is that architecture should follow use and that design is for people to work, live and play in, and this can be satisfied through community building that essentially relies on establishing mixed use and mixed levels of affordability.
The things that make Broadway special are the people who live and work there every day. The owner-operator businesses provide the attraction to people coming into the area for the unique shops and restaurants. The BBID support every aspect of day-to-day life and year round events that Saskatoon has become known for – unfortunately these independent businesses are fading with the end of each lease period and may soon be gone. Housing is a prime issue in Saskatoon; increased density can be achieved gracefully through multi-level-use planning.
What I suggest is that we, in whatever way it can be arranged, strive to put in place in a rule book to guarantee we can grow and preserve at once, for example: the B5B outlines the perimeters, sets heights defines set backs etc. But it’s the ‘inner workings’ of a building that will contain and define whether or not a building is successfully integrated to support the community.
To adhere to an integration and affordability platform will ensure that each building is designed in measured percentages that include mixed use lease and resale units – a variety of sizes of each type of unit (because size determines market value, lease rate, sale price, etc), and a variety of each unit per a percentage of each of type of use; be it retail, office or residential.
That this kind of coding of multiple use, multi-layered affordability could be what in fact defines a very healthy future for Broadway.
And this may be the only way we can ensure that Broadway remains a people place, that there will be something for everyone by-design regulations for sizes and uses of interior spaces. In this way the 360 plan can fulfill its mandate, be a model, impress on developers that mixed use, community affordability is incredibly important to people now and future generations of the Broadway District and for that matter, anywhere in Saskatoon.
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