As long time readers of my blog already know I live on a green a roof (which is so amazing I wrote about it twice). I also live above a couple of box stores including a Winners and Home Depot and not to mention a sushi restaurant, a cellphone shop, and a Starbucks as well as a Save-on-Foods.

As I tell my friends, I have the world’s largest pantry and workshop in my basement… I just don’t own anything in it yet.

Sounds weird? It would. And, it is awesome.

The building is called The Rise and yesterday, a few more people across the country got a chance to read about how great it (and other mixed-use developments are) are with the publication of Frances Bula’s piece in the Globe about it.

The piece (oddly) doesn’t even mention the green roof and garden we have in the middle of our complex. It does however go into significant detail about mixed use developments. Also odd is that the piece has the weird subtitle of “but not everyone is on board” where the reservations are few and limited to people in Toronto who, I suspect, have never seen the building:

In spite of that, many Torontonians, such as Mr. Klein and Mr. Jackson, are skeptical about Vancouver’s radical experiments in putting people on top of giant stores.

“The jury is very much out on the idea of residential on top of big box, like we’re seeing in Vancouver,” Mr. Klein says.

But Vancouver’s planning director, Brent Toderian, said he believes the Rise is a wonderful new example of mixed use. It’s one that the city went out of its way to encourage.

From my perspective, the jury is only out for those who’ve never lived or visited this place.