This 1970s era blight occupies a prime corner lot yet it doesn’t make use of the corner at all. All that is on the corner is a blank brick wall. They must consider Fredericton pedestrians really ugly as they put the ground floor windows up high so they can’t see out. The doors to the bank are actually on Carleton St., away from the more major Queen St. It looks like there are doors on Queen, but they are only emergency exits. In fact, the sole purpose of that alcove is so that panhandlers can use it to jump out in front of you to aggressively ask for change.

Although there are also a lot of of other smaller buildings around it, this lot is fairly large and could be redeveloped into something much nicer as it goes quite far down Carleton:

1 Comment »

It won’t be the NB Liquor store that we’re patiently waiting for, but a Picaroons retail outlet store.

After seeing this posted on Twitter, I thought I’d share it.

It is expected to be open by the first weekend of August. They will also use it to brew small batches of beer to be sold, but not drank on site.

It will be located here:

Peeking into the window shows that they are working on the interior already.

2 Comments »

There’s a lot of debate about what to do with the train station. I’ve briefly mentioned it before in a post, but I’ve been curious about why nobody has already fixed it up on their own. To be honest, it doesn’t matter to me whether they tear it down or fix it up. I’m actually going to try to be objective here.

Unfortunately, nobody has actually measured the building. I had to use the ruler tool in Google Earth to make this estimate, which may end up being very wrong.  I am roughly guessing that there is 4000 square feet of usable space in the building.

For the moment, we’ll assume that there will be 4000 square feet of total rentable space.

A few years ago, I was told by a real estate agent that buildings cost $100/sqft to build new. I’m not sure that’s 100% accurate, but that’s the figure we’ll use for now.

So to build a building the same size as the train station, it would cost $400,000. The net rent on a building in the same area is about $8 per square foot per year. This means that it will take 12.5 years to recover the building cost. Operating expenses and taxes aren’t included in the net rent. Usually money has to be reinvested into the building for renovations after about 20 years as parts of it get worn out (like the roof).

The formula used to get the years to ROI is:
(cost to acquire / square feet / net rent)

So for a quick summary, we have:
(400,000 / 4000 / 8 ) = 12.5

Now, many sources tell us that the train station will cost up to $2 million to fix. So plugging it into the formula we get:
(2,000,000 / 4000 / 8 ) = 62.5
Yikes. 62.5 years is definitely not commercially viable at all.

Let’s just run another similar sized building through the formula. We’ll take the Electric Motor Service building as a comparison. On June 22nd 2009, the values given were: Cost: $495,000, sqft: 5881

So we’ll plug them into the formula:
(495,000 / 5881 / 8 ) = 10.5

Depending on the current state of the building, 10.5 years is pretty good.

So for the train station repair to be commercially viable, $1.5 million will have to come from somewhere. It will either be J.D. Irving (who refused to pay much less for the basic maintenance that was required for the station to not get into its current state) or taxpayers (who will not be happy at paying for something that J.D. Irving broke).

5 Comments »

This drab building features the second worst kind of siding available (corrugated aluminum, the worst would have to be vinyl). With no elevator access and a layout that doesn’t allow for an open plan, this building has little value.

This uninteresting box has a parking lot beside it that could be used for something much better. As it abuts the parking garage, integrated parking would be a possibility.

2 Comments »

What’s the problem?

Acadian Lines were kicked out of their current location at Regent & Brunswick. They had to quickly find a new location as their landlord wanted them out in a hurry. The best location they could find was on Woodside Lane, which isn’t the most convenient location.

Against this location are:

• Downtown businesses who see the loss of potential clients
• Poverty activists who don’t like the fact that taxi fares will cost more
• NIMBYs who believe that bus users are drug addicted criminals
• Bus passengers who will now have to spend more on a cab or walk farther
• Environmentalists who want to increase the use of public transportation
• There are no sidewalks on Woodside Lane making a trip to Tim’s a bit unsafe
• Many other groups have many other reasons

Positives about this location:

• It’s available now
• Easy to get to from the highway, nice wide turning lanes for the buses
• It’s cheaper rent than downtown
• The mayor gets free advertising as that street is named after him
• Tim Horton’s sees more business

What are the alternatives?

Several alternative locations have been proposed, but each have their problems:

Two Nations Crossing

• Even more inconvenient than Woodside Lane.

The old Sobeys/Lofood/TRA

• That land would be better suited for a much larger development as it’s waterfront
• Expensive
• Floods in the spring
• The City owns the parking lot, but Sobey’s owns the building

The former Luna Pizza on Dundonald

• NIMBYs – remember the affordable housing project that wanted to go in there?

The former train station site on York

• There’s an old train station sitting on it that would have to be torn down or fixed up at great expense
• Heritage activists will protest the demolition of the train station
• Many citizens will protest tax dollars being used to fix up a derelict train station that Irving neglected
• Is it even fixable? We’ll have hordes of armchair structural engineers making their opinions known.
• Even if they do fix it up, it may not be up to proper “standards” that some people think it should be. The current bus station is pretty plain and bland. Can Acadian Lines actually afford something much nicer?
• I can’t imagine that site not being contaminated
• NIMBYs – remember all the protests about the Sobeys? It’ll be much worse for a bus station.
• Irving may not be willing to sell the land to Acadian Lines.

I don’t want the bus station on Woodside Lane, what can I do?

Your best bet is to let it go there for now. There is no point in making a big fuss about it now as it’s a done deal and there really aren’t any readily available options.

Remember that the City helped the Brunswick St. Baptist Church find new land for their expansion in order to save York House. That means they can also assist Acadian Lines in getting onto the train station property. Encourage them to do so.

Encourage Acadian Lines to work with the city to find a better location.

Tell the NIMBYs to shut up once they start complainig.  If heritage advocates start giving trouble, ask them where they were before the train station started falling over.

---

Update: July 16^th 2009. The vote has passed: Acadian Lines Fredericton Terminal update

4 Comments »

I missed the grand opening of what I think is a great idea for Fredericton’s downtown.  Not all employers are as generous as mine and allow bikes to be brought into the office.

I decided to check it out. $50 is a great deal for parking for a year.

I was curious how one got into there so I took a quick peek and noticed they had a proximity card system. This is probably the best system you could use in an installation like this as you can’t copy it like a key and you can deactivate them really easily if the card is lost or stolen.

I then noticed that it looked different on the other side. I assumed that you would also need to use the card to get out as steel bars don’t provide any reach-around security. Boy, was I ever wrong:

Yes that’s right, it’s a button. Their security system can be disabled with a coat hanger or even something less conspicuous like an air pump. (Note, I didn’t actually test this out myself)

No comments »

This large eyesore is mostly used for indoor parking. Sure, the bus terminal is functioning, but it’s an awful bus terminal. There’s no canopy to shelter you from the rain, no proper baggage handling system, bags are just left on the parking lot for anybody to pick up. Inside, the waiting area is spartan with uncomfortable plastic seating. The front of the building has been recently renovated and looks fairly nice, yet there are still remnants of when it was a gas station.

This building (and surrounding surface parking lots) easily take up over half a city block. This lot is larger than the Centennial Building’s lot so we can imagine something larger than the Centennial Building going in here.

4 Comments »