Making a Great Ground Floor - Johnson Street Examples
When I am walking around pretty much anywhere, I sometimes need to make myself stop and simply enjoy my surroundings. This problem is doubly so if I am in a city. Rather than just enjoying the streets as they are, I am looking and seeing where things could have been made a little bit different, or simply wondering what could have possibly led to the outcome in front of me. For this article, I thought show you how I look at buildings and ground floors in particular. If you have been reading Sidewalking Victoria for a few years, you would know that I strongly believe that the most important aspect of any building is its ground floor, as this is the part that all of us interact with as we walk by or enter them through. You can read a couple of these previous articles here, here and here.
Rather than just get into a description of a good ground floor (which again I have a whole article on and a downloadable infographic), in this article I have chosen a few ground floors from the part of Johnson Street that runs through Harris Green. For each of those I have taken a photo and drawn some of my key thoughts and will go into greater detail in a description of them. The reason I chose this portion of Johnson Street is that it seems to have a good variety of buildings as it has had its stops and starts in construction over the last few decades which has led to a pretty eclectic assortment of what you see there. Okay here we go.
Sutton Place
To start, I should say that I like the Sutton Place buildings, though I do prefer the one to the east, as it has so far maintained its brutalist finish. I wish someone at City Hall had stopped them from painting this one this awful grey. Still, they have always had a slightly science fiction look to them that I appreciate. That said, they both have terrible ground floors. The entrances to these buildings is partially a product of the time and likely partially where they sat in the urban fabric at the time they were built. To the south of them when they were constructed would have been block after block of car dealerships and with that you can hardly blame their retracted ground floor. Still, as the city has grown around them they have become more and more awkward.
A second issue is that for whatever reason, in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s there was a thought that everything should exist on multiple levels. You can see this with the City Centre Plaza on the corner of Douglas and Pandora as well as many other buildings from that time period. Over time we have realised that if we want people to go into a store, we should make it as easy for the pedestrian to be able to see what is there and decide to enter. Sutton Place fails on almost every count. Most people would not know that the ground floor of both of these buildings are commercial, now occupied by office focused businesses that don’t require the passerby to notice them. I don’t know if there have ever been any stores or food services tried in either building, but they certainly would have had a hard time. Facing the sidewalk is a large expanse of sidewalk that is clearly not public as the awning extends over it, and behind that are a row of stairs. Both of these elements make you not want to approach as a pedestrian. There are also large structural pillars and full cement planter boxes that obstruct your view making it hard to see if there would be a reason to move past these obstacles. Again, if these two buildings were built today, I have no doubt that they would not have the same ground floors, they are a product of their era and interesting in how much Victoria has changed during the ensuing decades.
1011 Johnson Street
Right across the street from Sutton Place is a newer building, I am sure that when it was built it had some fancy name, but I have forgotten it, it is just 1011 Johnson Street now. Unlike the frenetic pace of construction we see around the city now, for the first few decades that I lived here, change happened very slowly. When this building was under construction, I was pretty excited because it represented a huge change in use for the area from a surface parking dominated car area, to a pedestrian zone. This building is one of just a handful that were built under the Harris Green Charette plan of the late 1990s(a great, if outdated planning document). This plan envisioned a green, pedestrian focused, low scale Harris Green. 1011 Johnson gets really close to having a perfect ground floor, but over the years it has been less than successful at maintaining tenants. What it gets right: wide sidewalk right to the edge of the building, ground floor commercial with big windows and amazing mature canopy trees. What it gets wrong: ground floor is a little too short, there are some ornamental awnings that limit the ability of the businesses to put in proper signs and really it is a life boat of commercial in a sea of hodgepodge uses that are almost completely built out at this point. It is these last two things that are the challenge for the businesses. I do hope at some point those little awnings come off and some proper signs go up, but there is little to be done over the rest of the block. There is a cafe a little further to the east but that is the only other operating storefront. Next door the building has the new fire department and on the other side, a preserved heritage building (Bossi House) that is all residential. Still, it is good ground floor, there is a lot to learn from it, both good and bad.
The Dalmatian (Victoria Fire Department)
I suppose this would be the part of a Monty Python episode where John Cleese would say, “And now for something completely different.” The Dalmatian building which is the first of a massive group of buildings to be built at the end of this block is a bit of a mixed bag. The podium of the building contains the main Victoria Fire Department Station and an ambulance station. Above that are offices for the fire department and Victoria’s Emergency Coordination Centre. The building was designed to withstand the ”Big One” when it occurs which of course, has an impact on design. Above all of the offices is a black and white residential portion (get the name now?), that is not the most beautiful aspect of the building. But the podium and ground floor are amazing. It has nice wide sidewalks in front of it and the offices have this great reflective glass that paints a picture of the buildings across the street from it no matter which way you are walking, but best of all are the non-reflective windows of the garage doors of the fire station. This is every kids dream. You can walk by and see each of the engines in crystal clarity inside the station. I have had to detour my walk with my four-year-old a number of times so he could look in. It is not often that cities get infrastructure right, but I can safely say this is one of them for sure.
935 Johnson Street
Like Sutton Place, a block to the east, 935 Johnson is a product of its time. Built in the mid-90’s at a time when there was a still some momentum following the Commonwealth Games, a few buildings went up around downtown. Still, Harris Green was awash in car lots and despite being only a few blocks walk to Douglas, it felt like a world away. What was outside the door was a busy one-way thoroughfare and a lot of parking lots. In that context building a suburban four-storey building with deep setbacks almost makes sense. Now, as the city has grown up around it, 935 Johnson seems like an ever odder building. While it has some great mature canopy trees, they might be the nicest part of this building from an outward perspective. I will say that I am sure it is a great place to live due to its location, but it does little for the passerby. Apart from the standard suburban setback and decorative shrubs, the ground floor is further shielded from the sidewalk by a fence. This limits the eyes-on-the-street benefit that is so famously touted by Jane Jacobs. A further retreat from the neighbourhood has the main entrance set even further back from the sidewalk down a path that extends past the outward facade of the first floor on either side. We do still see buildings proposed like this in the surrounding neighbourhoods, but I think we can all be assured that we won’t see another one like this within the boundaries of downtown again.
1400 Quadra
I decided to save my favourite of this selection of ground floors for last. 1400 Quadra only completed in the last couple of years. Before that this was another of those ubiquitous Harris Green car lots. There are few buildings that I can think of that have been built in Victoria over the last 10 years that got so much right. The architect of 1400 Douglas understood the context this building was going into well. While the overall design is not something that is going to make your jaw drop, it is done well and with thought all the way up. However, it is the ground floor that I think was executed near perfectly (there are still a couple of quibbles I have with it, but they are minor). The first thing that was done well is the ground floor height. While it is a guess, by looking at the pedestrians in the picture above, I am going to guess it is about 14 feet. If you go down to Government Street or Johnson Street and think about the reasons that those stores are so inviting, one of the big ones is height. The height here is used well with tall windows from ground to ceiling allowing the passerby to see inside and determine if they want to stop in for a coffee (I highly recommend Nor Coffee actually). The sidewalk also goes right up to the facade of the building and there is little to get in your way as you approach the doors which again encourages people to stop and check a place out. On the east side there is a patio space which creates a point of animation and interest for those that are looking at it from afar (the Juliet building one block further west with the Macchiato patio also does this). Beyond the ground floor, I love the texture of the brickwork and the call out to the walk-ups of Old Town with the inset rectangular windows. As I said, I do have a couple of issues with the ground floor. The patio on the east side is not flush with the sidewalk and I am sure that at least one or two people must have tripped coming out of the coffee shop. There is also another spot along Johnson Street by the new cannabis store where the sidewalk and the public space in front of the building are not level, again creating an opportunity for someone to miss their footing. Still, like I said, these are minor issues.
I would love to hear what all of you see when you look at buildings. Do you have a favourite way you like to see ground floors? Is there an aspect of one of the buildings that I have mentioned here that I overlooked? Please let me know in the comments.