Driving through town today, something I don’t do often, I noticed that the sign for the Centre Ice Plaza is once again back up. When they first put it up you could barely read the name of the place, so when it came down I assumed it was to make a bigger one.

Along with the name of the place they have listed the two business which are already open, Bank of Montreal and Family Vision Centre. Below that there is a list of the “Coming Soon” businesses, which include: Nico’s Market, Barrenland Jewellery, Stanton Finace Dept.(?), L’Heritage Restaurant and Lube-X

I was actually a little surprised by this list of businesses. I was expecting a couple more retails stores than just Barrenland and Nico’s.

I am a little concerned for Barrenland, one of the perks of being in a retail populated outlet is you get customers from other stores but it doesn’t seem there will be many.

I am not sure of the date of the centre’s official opening becuase Polar Developments was closed when I called. The Feastival of Trees is being held at the plaza tonight (Nov 21) so I would assume the opening will be sometime in the next month or two.

What is your take on this new plaza now that you have an idea of the businesses that will be occupying it?

I have to know what your thoughts are, Yellowknife. I know the topic is on your mind because not only was it pointed out in one of last weeks issues of the Yellowknifer but and in this weeks editorial. The old Uptown vs. Downtown debate. What is your stance?

It has been said that Uptown is the place to be these days. More parking (so they say), cleaner, less clutter and closer to home for many. Ever since day one I have been on the fence and even if I was for one or the other I probably wouldn’t share it here. So instead I will try and bring to light some of the pros and cons or compare the two.

Parking

When it comes to parking, the downtown core can be a little hectic to find a place. A lot of the time the majority of meter parking is taken, taken by other shoppers and workers, but don’t go blaming them. They need a place to park as well and they have a job to do. There are very few parking lots, only one really comes to mind, the Yk Centre one. Which of course is full and crowded most of the day, but props to the management for trying to enforce the time limit so it is being rotated.

But then again much of this can be the same for uptown. Take for example the Walmart, Marks and Tim Hortons parking lot, now there is a bad design if I ever saw one. It is an accident prone space and over crowded to say the least. Especially when you have a Tim Hortons coffee rush, you end up with a drive through line through Walmarts area. Then there is the fact there is a fenced off closed down gas station smack dab in the middle of it all, but in all there more parking available or you don’t have to pay a dollar an hour.

Distance

This is where I think Downtown dominates. Everything is all within short walking distance, from mall to mall to mall. Not only is it nice to have stores so close to each other, it begins to start to feel like a community. I’m going to use Yk Centre West for example, as I work there, because everyone is right beside each other you start to get the sense of community between the stores, which in the end will benefit you the customer.  Now I can’t vouch for the other malls but I’m sure there is something similar and to me the downtown store seem a little less corporate and a little more local. As you can tell having to walk outside for more than 3 minutes is not something I like, so my uptown shopping experience would be more like the following. Drive up, jump out of car, run in to store, run out, drive to next store, repeat process, because if I have to drive to each place chances are I’m not going to take my time and enjoy it. The benefit distance wise for Uptown stores is how close it is to the majority of residents of Yellowknife. You have both Finlayson/Range Road area and all of behind Walmart as well as Northlands area.

The People

Now I’m really not going to get into this one, but I think everyone who reads this will understand what I mean. Uptown just does not get the same kind of people, purely because it is Uptown and not downtown. The issue of loiters has always been one for the downtown core but there has never been a good solution so that is why I think some business owners have taken the matter into their own hands and moved. Which is understandable, is it not?

Okay Yellowknife, you have heard the arguments, is there anything you have to add? Where are you went it come to this debate? Are you for Downtown or Uptown? One thing I did not add is the new addition to the Uptown core, the Centre Ice Plaza. Do you think the addition of an indoor outlet mall will take a bigger chunk out of Downtown than normal?

I have talked about the roads and parking lots in Yellowknife before but it is time to revisit it once again. Although the construction has been happening for some time now I thought I would bring the topic to the table again.

As you know and most likely have seen there is a new entrance going into the new plaza at the corner of Old Airport Road and Range Lake Road. It is going in between the intersection and the Tim Horton’s exit.

Now obviously because of the construction the 2 lane road has gone down to 1 and caused major back ups at 5pm, but that is just something we live with. What I do want to know is how you think this new entrance will affect the flow of traffic will be on Old Airport Road. Do you think it is a good decision to have this new entrance. I am sure we could also discuss the issue of parking within the plaza property but that might be for another time.

Here are some picture of the construction from a week or so ago: