Pandemic Lessons - Garage Businesses and Maker Spaces
With all the recent hub-bub about densifying single family neighourhoods, we want to bend your mind a little further to consider mixed uses in this same context. You got it - businesses and maker spaces operating out of garages and accessory structures - accessed off of existing front and back yards of single family lots.
The Urbanist published an article almost a year ago about the plight of Yonder Cider’s garage bar in the Greenwood neighbourhood of Seattle. Yonder was selling cider from a garage as a retail-only tasting room accessed off a back lane. And, the City of Seattle was about to shut it down. Why was this such a big deal? Well, using a garage for other uses displaces off-street parking, the Yonder signage was bigger than 64 square inches, and customers were coming and going freely - not by appointment as required by local bylaws. The bar closed in early February and promptly reopened in March following Dan Strauss’ Bringing Business Home Bill. The bill altered land use codes that negatively impacted home-based businesses and allowed them to feasibly operate for the duration of the pandemic with less onerous restrictions.
It is kind of crazy that it took a pandemic to significantly alter the way we think about our live/work situation. If there is anything that lockdown reinforced - it was that a walkable full-service community is the foundation for resilience. The potential for small scale commercial and entrepreneurial start ups to contribute to the vibrancy of our residential communities shouldn’t be snuffed out as we return to “normal” in the next few months.
Timing is everything… and locally the Urbanarium will be announcing the winners of a design competition titled “The Mixing Middle” next week. The competition challenged proponents to reimagine single family neighbourhoods as vibrant mixed use communities with commercial, maker and community spaces built in combination with denser housing on single family lots. We are hopeful that this design effort will turn some heads with local municipal leadership, and that we will be regulars at a local alley taproom in East Van sometime soon.