They were there and then they were gone.
The Golden Mile, the stretch of Bayfield Street north of Highway 400, has seen plenty of retail come and go over the years.
Those include Towers (now the site of a Walmart store), the vacant former Sears outlet in Georgian Mall, Beaver Lumber (later the now-defunct Barrie Examiner offices and currently a Postmedia hub location), Zellers in the Kozlov Centre, and White Rose (now a Staples), to name but only a few.
But this area of Barrie is still home to many businesses that contribute to the day-to-day retail and commercial needs of local residents as well as the travelling public, and there is a range of economic activity which is important to the city’s overall economic health in terms of jobs, as well as business success.
“There was a move to shopping malls in the '70s and '80s — which was happening in most communities at the time — that saw this area emerge as a new commercial node. Large tracts of land were used for parking for sprawling strip malls and enclosed shopping centres. It was very auto-dominated and away from the walkability of downtown,” says Michelle Banfield, the city’s director of development services.
She has been familiar with the Golden Mile area for a long time.
“At the time, Bayfield Street was all there was, and not just in Barrie. I grew up in Bradford and we’d drive up to Barrie for retail and commercial and for the longest time, Bayfield Street was all there was. As the city grew and different settlement patterns happened, we have now seen other commercial retail areas of the city develop," Banfield says.
“There is the more historical part of the downtown — the main street — (as well as) Park Place, and along Mapleview and Bryne Drive,” she adds.
The city is keeping an eye on the area.
“We have to look at the footprint of how Bayfield Street is being used in regards to the strip malls and lots of parking,” says Dave Hyde, manager of the city’s Small Business Centre. "We do consistently get development proposals about other ways to use that land (or other areas) and we haven’t landed on that yet.
“But one can only assume that someone will come to us with a proposal that is actually attractive and gain some traction to start to look at those areas," he adds. "I’m not suggesting that’s going to happen any time soon, but there are certainly discussions going on."
During the last five or more years, there has been a move away from parking in favour of transit, online shopping and mixed-use development, Banfield says.
One of the buzzwords is intensification, Hyde says.
“That’s what we’re doing with the downtown. We’re building up instead of just being residential. We’re looking at multi-use of those buildings. We have retail and office space and (perhaps) 10, 15, 20 storeys of residential on top of that," he says.
“That becomes more and more about the discussion and how to make use of the land we’ve got,” Hyde adds. “The discussion around the use of land around Bayfield Street is only going to intensify. So what do we need to do to make better use of that space and what ideas are out there?"
