Whose grandmother's basement was the meeting held in?
This issue came up at the community meeting and the presenters (which included Roland at RAW) talked about the awkwardness of having to walk past Prospect to get to the site coming from Corso as part of the issue (it's kind of isolated from the rest of the strip.)This should have retail at-grade. The proposal is for live/ work fronting St. Clair.
Have you looked at the area and have not, retail is and has been dieing for decades. Retail will not work everywhere, since the market area is too small or too many of the same thing in different form. You got the big boxes only a few blocks away.It would be silly to not have retail.
There is a lot of foot traffic coming from the west side and north as people make their way to the park.