most people will be entering the station from the bottom level, it is where the subway and PATH connections are.
There's really an incredible number of people entering Union from this route. It makes sense to channel all the people through that area. The massive center stairs provides a convenient route from TTC straight up to the platform area. What surprises me is that the food is more towards the York-side rather than the Bay-side; I'd think there'd be more food business if it was on the other side. On the other hand, maybe they wanted to put the food court out of the way from the incredible traffic flow from TTC.
I suspect they're designing a "
Urban Eatery" style or "
Washingon Union Station" higher-end food court, since that's been the sort of fancy food court templates as of late. That, in itself, would definitely be an attraction for me, e.g. deciding to eat dinner there and catching a later Lakeshore GO train. With all-evening service on Lakeshore, I often find myself deciding where to eat downtown before heading to Union. I also observe there's some large food space, so there must be several full-fledged restaurants with seating within. If this is a better food court, and a bunch of nice yummy restaurants, I definitely would sometimes go to Union to eat my dinner before commuting home!
to access the smells that will make them hungry?
The massive center stairs is a big hole in the middle of the floor of the York concourse, so the rising warm air from below should carry a lot of good smell upwards -- so I bet the York concourse users will become hungrier than Bay concourse users.
I'd expect that much of the food court in Union station would be closed in evenings and weekends when games are on - surely that kind of space must be for business use.
Nope, not for business-only use (not a convention center).
All consumer food court and sit-in restaurants! It's a big upgrade for Union. The flat green you see, is the food court seating/tables, surrounding the massive York staircase. The large green establishments are sit-in restaurants, plus possibly market restaurants (like "Richtree" or "La Marche").
As GO service expands to all-day bidirectional service on all routes, especially with future 15-minute rail service, I think they will keep it open late, if they are following an fancy food court template. With better all-day service, some people will opt to skip a train or two, while grabbing food, once there's no "missing the last train" threat. All-day 30 minute service to Brampton/Mt. Pleasant could be feasible by 2016-2017, after the Georgetown Corridor kinks are ironed out and Union revitalization is well finished. Then we'd have 3 GO lines running all day 30-minute service, and 1 line running 15-min-or-better service (UPX). And VIA users, who often arrive earlier to the station than GO users.
All that begins to provide a sustainable business model for a large food court at Union, and as many lines eventually gains 15-minute service, in the GO RER initiatives, a Union Station food court will be incredibly busy in 10-15 years with 2-3 times the traffic going through Union.
Better to design it for a massive flagship-league food court now because we'll be stuck with the new station layout for several decades.
Union, after 2016, will be more a desirable destination into itself, than it used to be. 2015 is only a peek, as it will not be busy enough to be fully open, they said it will all open in stages. I believe 2017+ is when the food fun really begins, when enough demand is online to make the entire court sustainable.
