Car Hell, Food Paradise - Shelbourne Valley Centre
Walking through the Blanshard and Fort Food Market area, it is hard not to impressed by the sheer variety of food in such a small space. I wrote about it about it a couple of years ago, just to show the the selection that you have compressed into four square blocks. Still at this time, the area is unrivaled in Victoria, but there is a place that I would guess is a close runner-up and it’s not anywhere you would likely think of. About five kilometres northwest of Fort and Blanshard puts you into the heart of suburban Saanich. Specifically, the blocks surrounding Shelbourne and Cedar Hill X Road are one of the densest food destinations in the city.
I would expect that until now you may have driven by this area without much of a thought, as I have for many years. A couple of months ago I was dropped off at the beautifully renovated Horner Park. After my little son and I had spent well over an hour there, we decided to head down the hill and check out the shops.
I will say two things, first I had been to this area to go to a specific place many times before, whether that was Fairways, Kuma Ramen or Fujiya, but it had always been to visit that one place, and I had almost always gone there by car. The second thing I will say, is that walking around it for the first time as a pedestrian, it is a wholly terrible place. Loud, difficult to navigate narrow sidewalks and shopping plazas that never expected anyone to go between more than one of the stores before moving their car (I have included a couple pics above of the car oriented feel of the space). But as I pushed the stroller around, I was struck by a variety of restaurants that I had not appreciated before. In all, I walked through all three plazas and past some of the other little commercial buildings on Shelbourne. It was odd to see, but it was there, a Chinese restaurant, a pho place, a Jewish deli, pizza, two Korean chicken places and so much much more! Most of the places, I had either never heard of and certainly had never visited. All I had to do was to turn my gaze back to the parking lot or to the cars whizzing down Shelbourne to know why. This is not a place to explore on foot.
Apart from me not exploring it though, seeing this terrible place as a food oasis had never been presented to me either. Why are not people talking about heading Shelbourne plaza for their Friday nights? Is it just me? Have I been missing the magazine articles about it?
I know that Saanich has plans for the Shelbourne Valley and I had looked at them before, but now I wanted to go back and have another look with the lens of what is being done specifically to entice people here and want to spend time moving around the space outside of their cars. The current status of the plan can be read here. I had hoped to see some big plans for broader sidewalks but it isn’t there. There are plans for bike lanes and the reduction of some of the lanes of car traffic, but I am not sure it is going to be enough to make this into what it should be, which is a place to hop off the bus and wander around sampling some different types of food before stopping in for a pint at one of the pubs or do some singing in one of the couple of karaoke bars. This should definitely be a weekend evening destination. After reading through the plans, I did look at a couple of the other pages that came up in my search and it turned out that d’Ambrosio Architecture had created a vision for the Saanich plan of the Shelbourne Valley. As I looked through the pictures, I was struck by the one that was chosen for Shelbourne Valley Centre, because it is exactly what should be there. You can see it below. The picture has a fountain and public plaza surrounded by a bunch of vendors. In an ideal world, I would hope these could represent some sort of food market that could enhance the destination aspect of the place even more. Imagine a Victoria version of the Richmond Night Market happening here during the summer!
D’Ambrosio Architecture Vision for Shelbourne Valley Centre (Courtesy of D’Ambrosio Architecture)
Of course, that idea is for the future once we have seen some significant development of the area, that said, if the businesses that are in the area now, worked together they could at least start promoting the space as the destination it should be. I went for another walk through the space last week to take some pictures and get a better sense of the diversity of the food.
As I walked around, I counted a total of about 26 food service establishments and that does not include the big fast food places that are also in the area. It does include three grocery stores though, apart from Fairways, there is also a Mediterranean and Japanese one. I am sure that I have missed some of the places that are in the area and I didn’t include what is likely to be an even greater amount if you went up to McKenzie Avenue. If you know an amazing place that I didn’t get a picture of, let me know. And if you visit during the day, I would encourage you to stop and eat whatever you get at the recently improved Gore Peace Park on the west side of Shelbourne. It is still noisy, but it is also gives a taste of what an improved Shelbourne Valley Centre could be like if we turned it from a car place into a people place.
