Silence&Motion
Senior Member
The north side has 12th Ave, a few parking lots and the green line. The south has 17th Ave, a ton of parking in the Stampede Grounds and both the Red and Blue lines. Also parking to the north is planned to disappear in favour of developments over time (if we can convince the Stampede to let go of the Remington lands) while parking in the Stampede Grounds is all but assured to still exist far off into the future.
The NW corner is actually more directly accessible to Victoria Park Station (see below). It is also more accessible to City Hall station (closest Blue Line station) and the future Green Line station. The BMO centre stands directly in between 17th ave and the Event Centre. Getting from 17th ave to the plaza will not be straightforward at all and involve a lot of twists and turns, and walking for more than a block along the side of a hostile convention centre. Meanwhile, ,people walking to the area from the Beltline, Downtown, East Village, Inglewood/Ramsey will all be passing through 12 Ave. That includes drivers who park in the East Village parking garage.
As you mention, there is way more development potential in the north. In fact, one of four corners of the NW intersection is already developed. That's a good thing. The plaza will fail if it's surrounded by parking lots. With all those parking lots in the south, plus the loading docks for the BMO centre, I anticipate that the plaza will often serve as a de facto parking lot itself, which is what you can see here occurring at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena.