Image courtesy ArcX.
A quick note today, but before I post, I’d like to mention that we’ve been having problems with commenting here on the Waterloo Wellington Bloggers Association blog. This has been mostly due to the changeover of the backend software to Movable Type 5.0, and issues with handling legacy blogging code. I have to say that I’ve found trying to update the templates here, especially those that I’ve custom-made, to be a bit of a fraught process. The problems with the comments here at the WWBA was just one symptom, but hopefully now it’s one less.
In other news, I have to report on the loss of a neighbourhood chain restaurant. The Pizza Hut sit down restaurant at the corner of Victoria and Westmount has closed down. The windows are dark, the signs are gone, and the place is up for lease. I hadn’t been in the restaurant for a little while (which is probably one reason why it’s now gone), but I had made use of it earlier in 2009 for my family pizza cravings. It was the one pizza joint within walking distance of my home. Now, if we need a quick bite to eat, the corner can only boast a Taco Bell and a Wendy’s.
I’ve always found the Victoria/Westmount intersection to be a rather odd duck. It’s not quite commercial, and it’s not quite residential. On one corner, you have a gas station and a convenience store. Behind it are a series of high rise apartments that, theoretically should provide some much needed foot traffic for the intersection — although in my experience, they’re more aligned away from that intersection and towards the Victoria Hills neighbourhood, which has its own little mall.
Stand on the corner of the gas station, facing the intersection and look to the corner on your right and you will see the beginnings of a shopping plaza, with a much needed urgent care clinic and associated pharmacy, the previously mentioned Taco Bell and shuttered Pizza Hut and an assortment of small scale commercial establishments, including a laundromat. Kitty-corner from the gas station is a Jewish cemetary, and on the corner to your left, you have a too-big parking lot and the aforementioned Wendy’s. This corner used to boast a gas station of its own, but this was demolished and, for the longest while, a sign promised the construction of a new William’s Coffee Pub — something we eagerly anticipated as a nearby place to retire to and write, and which we were bitterly disappointed about when it didn’t materialize.
This corner is struggling to define itself as a commercial draw for the residents around it. One block to the south, along Highland Road, there are many places to eat and shop. All of the big fast food joints, Tim Hortons, Swiss Chalet, East Side Marios and Angels Diner draw people in. People from around the Victoria/Westmount intersection can easily walk there and more easily drive there, and I think do so. I can’t help but wonder if the corner of Victoria and Westmount is caught in a catch-22: it doesn’t have the critical mass required to draw enough business in from the surrounding neighbourhood, and when a place like Pizza Hut shutters, and William’s never materializes, the chances of reaching that critical mass dim.
I don’t know what to suggest for the corner in order to turn things around, but I’m saddened here that there is potential for the corner to be a resource for the community around it, and that potential remains unrealized for the foreseeable future. Maybe if a business or a service could be encouraged to take up the empty space by the Wendy’s, things will improve, but I don’t know what we could do to encourage this, or even what business or service would be of best use to the surrounding community.
Those wanting Pizza Hut pizza still have sit-down locations at University and Weber in Waterloo, at Fairway and Manitou in Kitchener and (I believe) on Hespelar Road and Bishop in Cambridge. There are also take-out-only locations, such as the one I used last night at Fischer-Hallman and Ottawa.
That area (Victoria Hills?) has a lot of residential density, but it’s all on crescents and away from the streets. I don’t think it’s really about the draws of the specific commerce so much as the inherent unfriendliness to foot traffic.
What would really help there is frequent bus service on all of Victoria Street, without any meandering. It would give people a reason to actually go towards the street instead of getting in their cars and driving off to absolutely wherever else in town.
What I miss most coming to Kitchener from Toronto 19 years ago, is a good Jewish Deli like Pickle Barrel or Shopsy’s or Switzer’s or James and my favourite, Panzer’s. Wouldn’t one of these go well in that vacant spot across from the Jewish cemetery?