Glass covered horeca/food market with local produce

First of all, I would like to suggest to build covered walk paths connecting the two shopping wings. This will increase the flow of people between buildings especially during poor weather days. This benefits both the consumers and the shops. The covered walk paths could be built of glass top, so that people could still enjoy natural skylight while being sheltered from the weather.

As for the center square, I would like to propose a covered glass house, like the Torvehallerne in Copenhagen (torvehallernekbh.dk), and connecting it with glass covered walk paths between the two shopping wings and to the car park. With a glass house, people around or passing by could see, enjoy and be attracted by the atmosphere and activities going on inside the glass house. The transparent structure will not only add liveliness to the square, it would also likely attract more customers for the businesses in and around the whole square. The key point of a glass house structure is to allow people to enjoy commercial activities in a comfortably covered environment regardless of the weather conditions and at the same time being able to enjoy the natural sunlight during the day, and enjoy moonlight at night. During summertime sun shades and proper ventilation will need to be considered. With the covered connecting walk paths, the improved end-to-end comfort experience will increase people’s desire to visit and consume in the whole square at any time in most weather conditions.

The total overall look and feel of the glass house should be contemporary comfortable, and the multi business offerings should be catered for from young to senior working people, friends and/or family with kids casually going out, to a hip evening out for the retirees. The idea should be a contemporary casual cozy atmosphere for everyone. 

In terms of the type of shops or service offerings in the newly built glass house, I have thought about a few ideas to share. There are still many types of businesses or services offerings that are currently available in the congested Amsterdam center but not conveniently available in Amstelveen. For example, a hip wine bar (including regular wine tasting offerings which would also promote their business), a healthy tea station, a whiskey bar with regular whiskey tasting events for the whiskey lovers, a dessert place (pannenkoeken/crêpe/Asian desserts), a local coffee bar with trained baristas, etc.. There could also be a section of fresh produce from local suppliers to cater for people who do not have time to visit the current weekly markets, for many working people there’s almost no chance to get fresh market produce after they get off from work. But this section needs to be kept neat and clean so that it doesn’t affect the comfort of consumers for other businesses sharing the glass house. In addition, the city could also hold/promote cultural celebrations together with the businesses in the glass house, for example Chinese New Year, dragon boat (dumpling) festival, moon cake festival, Halloween, Diwali, Thanksgiving, Sinterklaas, Christmas, etc.. Cultural promotions could be such as most businesses putting up decorations and special promotions/offerings for that cultural theme celebration. Promoting cultural celebrations will create awareness, understanding and respect amongst the different culture and multi-ethnic residents of Amstelveen.

I hope my ideas are helpful to the Gemeente of Amstelveen and contributing to improving living quality and lifestyles for the Amstelveners, and I surely hope that my proposal would come true as I would very much enjoy it myself.