Thinking about Main Street

This is a response to a post by Sandy Sorlien, and was sent to the pro-urb listserv. It's touched up and edited. (Her original post is towards the bottom of this entry.)

In Cities in Full, a great numbers-based "update" of Death and Life of Great American Cities, Steve Belmont writes about how commercial districts need 10,000 to 15,000 (if including entertainment) residents close by to have successful districts. Of course, potential customers have other options, so they have to want to shop there. (Monday's Austin American-Statesman had an article about how students at the local college don't shop in Georgetown TX because there's "nothing there.")

Whereas Kennedy Smith is the pro at Main Street, I am but an acolyte, but here's what I would say... In today's brutal retail environment, most traditional commercial districts (traditional downtowns in big cities, smaller towns, and neighborhoods) need to draw upon a population that is usually larger than what would be normally present strictly relying upon nearby residents. That is why people see at times successful neighborhood commercial districts in otherwise barren cities, because they abut "pods" of density, usually colleges that are _residential_ not commuter schools, where walking is the primary transit mode.

This is the phenomenon, in small towns, that Sandy has noticed. College towns, where the college is residential, and reasonably connected to the town, can have thriving commercial districts, because the town benefits from the extra dose of density and disposable income provided by the students. (A college also ups the "creative class" component of the town, which can have other social capital and business benefits.)

The successful traditional main streets such as Coral Gables or Beverly Hills or Boulder or Birmingham Michigan and many others managed to hang on even as traditional commercial districts were abandoned for malls, and serve as (unenclosed, not sharing common ownership and management) "shopping malls" and therefore regional draws, getting the numbers of patrons required to be successful--with a lot of spin, fold, mutilate, and reformulation in response to various changes such as the loss, usually, of department stores.

South Street in Philadelphia and Carytown in Richmond VA are two examples of very different, successful, independent shopping districts. Birmingham stayed successful for a long time because it had two branches of small regional department store chains that managed to survive into the 1980s/1990s, keeping the town in the game long enough for trends to catch up to what it already had. Without those department stores during the years that most retail in the Detroit area migrated to malls, Birmingham would likely have died retail-wise.

(Note: the fact is that lifestyle centers are basically just newly constructed versions of such, but based on chains rather than independent businesses, with common ownership and management, by national companies, although they let the buildings look different.)

I'm not fully comfortable with your "good" vs. "tourist" typology in classifying traditional commercial districts. Even in Manhattan, where I was poking around a couple months ago, it appears that most neighborhoods have restaurants, food selling, and sundries (drug store, news stand), but that most other retail needs are met in larger nodes (such as Union Square) serving many neighborhoods.

In our Main Streets that have to compete with national and international companies that own the shopping malls, lifestyle centers, and power centers populated by national and international chains, we need to provide unique destination retail and entertainment and other draws (movies, theaters, historic sites, great restaurants, attractions, etc.) to attract out-of-neighborhood patrons to help support the services and retail that "we" would like to have to serve "us", but can't otherwise generate the demand for (e.g., how many times to you buy shirts in a year, and do you always buy them in the neighborhood? add 'em all up and it might not be enough to support many clothing shops, etc.), with the added zing of the "wild" offerings that come from also serving other populations. (This is Jacobs' point about density, that it allows for viable speciality and variety that could not otherwise be supported.) Destination retail can be a great hardware store or a unique specialty shop.

(Unfortunately, a lot of time Main Street success is built on specialty shops selling stuff that we don't really need. My beliefs in "sustainability" and consumer excess sometimes get challenged...)

Lately I have been thinking of this in terms of a "we are all destination managers now" variant of Nixon's "we are all Keynesians now" quote. Regardless of who we are trying to attract to our traditional commercial districts, and as people on this list know, I am in Sandy's camp in terms of reviving what we have rather than encouraging the continued running amuck and building more and more new retail, increasingly "farther out" from the core, which enables sprawl, we have to provide excellent and complete experiences--things to see and do, places to shop and eat, etc. (I happen to be reading the book Tourism Development Handbook right now and it's fabulous, a practical primer on tourism, really "destination," planning and development.)

The problem with tourist main streets of course is a variant of Gresham's Law "bad money drives out good" -- tourist retail and services over time drives out locally owned and locally serving businesses (the prices go up too). Certainly this is an issue in places like Georgetown DC, Alexandria, VA, Annapolis, MD, and Charleston.

As far as the "consignment store culture" goes, this is present in weak market large cities and their inner ring suburbs too, and it can be the seed of eventually rebirthed retail districts (think Royal Oak Michigan or South Street in Philadelphia, the latter still has about 9 used CD stores while Royal Oak is losing used record stores in favor of restaurants and upscale home furnishings).

This is exactly what Jane Jacobs meant in terms of the "large stock of old buildings" available with lower rents able to incubate new, creative, and innovative uses. This is one of the reasons that the "creative class" frequents old places, because such places with old buildings and (hopefully) low rents are economically supportive of innovation.

In fact, I think our weak market center cities need to think about this more strategically. I think of the State of Michigan "Cool Cities" initiative as a way for the cities to compete with the suburbs for creativity, innovation, to reposition the value of "grit," to help attract human and other capital to stabilize and improve otherwise attractive but severely disinvested and underpopulated neighborhoods (you called this process "gentrification" while I prefer to call it "reinvestment," and I think the Brits might call this "inward investment"). Also look at the Get Urban website for insights into finding "urban experiences" in smaller cities (like Omaha or Columbus Ohio).

Thinking about your points about the value of institutions, given your prison example, it "ain't" any old institution coming to a community that makes a difference, it's how that institution connects to the community, what they offer, the urban design, how they get there, and how they get around when they are there. 200 prison guards aren't going to go out to lunch in the community and visitors to the prison aren't going to go out to a nice dinner and a movie in the local commercial district. This is why all too often institutions end up not contributing to communities, because they aren't integrated into the built environment fabric that already exists.

Part of the issue is what economists call "discretionary time". Anyway, residentially-based college students have a lot more discretionary time than working adults coming to school at night, etc. This is likely why certain types of college programs can benefit a local community, while others appear to have no impact.

A commuter college or a hospital reliant on car-based visitors and a campus unlinked to the broader community won't generate much either, without some focused steps. E.g., Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (not driving based) has just opened a new college bookstore not in the interior of the campus but on a street that links the campus to the community and the bookstore (with art supplies and other products) is intended to also serve noncampus people.

Comparable to one of Sandy's original points about institutional anchors, as far as "uneven" or "enclave" development goes, disconnected from the community around it, the development in the vicinity of DC's Navy Yard is a perfect example. M Street SE is rapidly becoming an office ghetto, dark and barren by 6 pm. It's developed and it adds to the tax base, but it might as well be a suburban office or industrial park.

It's possible, but I won't hold my breath, that the coming baseball stadium will lead to some mixed use development as part of the overall development plan. Low income housing is being demolished for another Hope VI project so that will add some higher income residents, but more residential development is likely needed to change the balance and get more residents in the area (mixed use a la Jacobs...) that is seriously skewed/unbalanced at present. Other low income housing was demolished in favor of housing for the Marines (the Marine Barracks are located nearby on 8th Street SE, which is a Main Street district in DC) and it looks nice, but it isn't likely to bring the kind of demographic power that will support the further development of retail in that area.

This is really nuanced and intricate work, trying to figure out what works and why, and then to make recommendations accordingly, and to get those recommendations adopted (wending your way through the various interest groups and power structures advocating for particular positions and benefits) and then implemented.

E.g., for a community in Prince George's County that's in their county arts district, I'd recommend working to get the community college's performing and visual arts programs moved to a new building in the heart of their traditional commercial district (or the University of Maryland, although that would be a political feat), with added transit (trolley) connections, moving the local library branch to this strip, and attracting retailtainment such as coffeeshop-music, super bookstore with active presentation program (it's down the street from University of Maryland), upscale billiards (think "Buffalo Billiards" in DC), a combination fresh market-bistro-housewares cooking school place ("Fresh Market"--NC--meets "Sur la Table" plus a cafe), etc., to position this town as the unique retail centerpoint of the county's broad retail attraction and development strategy. (I interviewed for a job there, which is why I started researching and thinking about it, we'll see if it goes anywhere.) (Here's what they are doing in the Shirlington area of Arlington County Virginia--one of the things is to add a nonprofit theater to be connected to the local branch of the county library.)

Or in DC, there's a neighborhood where I keep putting out the idea for the major local college to move its bookstore to the neighborhood commercial district and for the two colleges in the community to buy the drugstore and re-convert it back to a theater that could be used by both schools as well as for movies and other functions, etc. (Howard University does have its bookstore on the main drag, Georgia Avenue, but it's not really in much of a nonstudent residential area, so it doesn't have much multiplier effect. Still they should be commended for the effort.)

In short, the process of revitalizing our traditional commercial districts is a constantly changing fascinating mosaic that is equal parts frustration, challenge, excitement, and fun. The thing that I am only beginning to learn is the value of patience. This stuff takes a long time to effectuate, a lot longer than you'd imagine, plus you don't have master leases to club people over the head with so that they "get with the program."

Sandy Sorlien wrote:

(Check out Sandy's great project on photographing Main Streets.)

Sandy, Where did you write that only university towns and tourist destinations have good Main Streets? Off the top of my head, I can think of many wealthy sections of the northeast that have thriving Main Streets, and also think of other places like Beverly Hills and Coral Gables (neither a university town nor a tourist destination, despite being in Miami near UM). With a little thought, I think I could come up with quite a long list. So having only seen a snippet of your post, I curious to see the quote in context.

John, Which snippet? I wrote on the New Discourse list the following, is that what you saw? I wasn't going to cross-post it, but since Kennedy and Richard (Main Street mavens) are on this list maybe it's a good idea. Regarding your comment, Coral Gables must benefit from the proximity of UM, but only having driven through it, I can't judge it on the ground. I do NOT include tourist main streets (Main Street Museums) as "good" because a "good" main street serves the residents, not just tourists. It must have a hardware store, shoe store, housewares store, post office, cafe, grocery/convenience/general store, and pharmacy. Of course there are exceptions, but it seems to me that there are precious few of those types left without major institutions in or near them.

Here's my NewDis post:Why can't we take the emphasis off greenfield TND suburbs and rebuildthe thousands of small towns in America that have perfectly wonderful urban fabric? What do they need for revival after the mills have shutdown and/or the highway bypasses them and/or the WalMart comes along?

I think they each need one major institution downtown like a university, arts center, or research center. In my observations traveling the country photographing them for the past four years, the only remotely thriving main street towns that do not have to depend on tourism are college towns. These actually have shoe stores and movie theatres and housewares stores and don't shutdown completely at 5 PM. (See Bryan, Texas; Frostburg, Maryland; Athens, Georgia). The tourist towns can be very handsome, but the residents still have to drive to the sprawl zone to buy shoes and housewares and see a movie. (Jonesborough, Tennessee; Van Buren, Arkansas; Lewisburg, West Virginia).

A consignment store culture often follows small-town disinvestment, followed by a streetscape improvement effort consisting of unnecessary benches, brick sidewalks, and overwrought streetlamps, then maybe some street festivals, then if they're lucky some real antique stores, gift boutiques, and facade improvements. B&Bs andtourists follow, but it's still not a real town.

A dead town needs the kind of institution that attracts young people,s tudents, and/or artists who don't mind living in main street apartments or in dilapidated warehouses. In other words, bring theFirst Wave of gentrification in quickly by bringing the institution first.I have no idea how to encourage that on any grand scale. However, I saw, last month, in severely impoverished McDowell County WestVirginia, the excitement of the people at the promise of two such institutions planning to come to their area. Unfortunately, the institutions coming to their dead towns are prisons.