Condo Success. Condo Dilemma.

Governing Magazine’s June issue has a story on Vancouver condos that seems to strike amazingly close to home.  The general idea is that the city’s policies and choices in the early nineties intended to attract residents worked so well that office space and other aspects of the downtown lifestyle are disappearing. 

Vancouver has begun to realize that its downtown is such a magnet for urban condo dwellers that it runs the risk of ceasing to serve the other purposes downtowns have traditionally served — as centers of commerce, corporate employment, jobs and overall economic life. It’s not that business has fled central Vancouver: The downtown peninsula still ranks first as an employment center within the metropolitan area, with about 77,000 jobs. But the percentage keeps going down, there have been virtually no major office building projects launched in this century, the amount of land available for new commercial development is almost non-existent, and given the still-explosive demand for high-rise urban living, it doesn’t take too much imagination to see what downtown Vancouver could become in a decade or two: a place where huge numbers of people live but not many work.

Is that our problem?  Not yet.  But what happens if our residential condominium boom continues, mixed use is only occasionally built, and we see no new commercial space downtown?  City Hall is talking about going condo and new condo projects are popping up all over town.  We continue to hear that retail and commercial will follow, but where will they go if all the prime space is taken by condo projects.  Is this our problem in ten, twenty, or thirty years?  Is this our problem now? 

The Exit133 posting only skims the surface.  Check out the whole article.  It’s a worthwhile read. 

Enough of you seemed convinced of the applicability of this article to Tacoma that I received ‘tips’ from a half dozen folks.  Thank you.

Link to Governing