A thoughtful response from B.C. to my inquiry follows...
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Within the City of Kelowna in British Columbia, we were faced with a
similar problem. Our City has a pop. of 95,0000 and we would prefer to
accommodate Big box retail at focal points(Urban Town Centres) within our
City rather than on our periphery. One of our Town centres is really an
historical auto-oriented retail strip. To try and change things we have
asked that the secondary stores to be developed on the site in future will
be oriented to the street to provide a built form along the arterial
roadways with plenty of landscaping. Both will hide the parking. We are
also requiring pedestrian corridors(landscaped) at key access points
through the parking area with more landscaping between rows of parking.
Finally the area in back of the building will also be heavily landscaped
with berming to cut down on massing. No planner likes to deal with these
but they are a reality of the current retail market place and so we would
prefer to have them within our juristiction. I think it was Frank Lloyd
Wright who said "Doctors bury their mistakes, Architects plant ivy."
Ron Mattiussi
1420 Oakridge Rd
Kelowna, B.C.
V1W 3A8
Kenton Bird
Department of Journalism
and Technical Communication
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1785
Phone: (970) 491-5986 Fax: (970) 491-2908
e-mail: KBird@vines.ColoState.edu