Bingo cards to startup stars?

The Delta Bingo Hall located in Gore Park on the corner of King and Hughson is closing. Bingo halls have been in decline lately so the news perhaps shouldn’t be too surprising. It’s also unfortunate for the charities supported by the bingo hall, the attendees and those who worked there – hopefully everyone is able to find alternatives.

That said, for a long time now people have looked at that space as being underutilized in its potential. It’s a massive, wide-open space with big clear windows surrounding the corner of the building. It was hard to not think about what could be there instead.

A year and a half ago at SuperCrawl I remember talking with Nick Tomkin about that space and how it would make a cool co-working / incubator / accelerator type space. Not only had he had the exact same idea, he had actually whipped together a rendering. After talking to people it looks like others have had the same or similar idea too.

I’m not sure what makes the most sense at that spot from a logical standpoint. From what I’ve been told a space like that is best suited for high traffic commercial. That makes sense.

But you see stories like Communitech and Ryerson DMZ and it makes you wonder. I recently got to be part of a tour of Communitech, and we were told that one of their more successful and significant tenants was now shopping around for nearby office space to expand into. We have vacant office space downtown and lots of surface parking lots. That 21st floor of the Stelco Tower looks awfully beautiful during Hive X and other events, but it would be a lot better to see the space occupied!

Obviously the case needs to be made better than anecdotal evidence and a short blog article. But what do you think? Could some sort of co-working / incubator / accelerator space flourish in that location?