Energy Bill

This AP article "Energy bill a disappointment, and opportunity, for wind, solar and biofuel boosters," summarizes the legislation, and this article, "Midwest embraces ethanol as boost to farmers, economy," discusses ethanol.

Read this book and you'll understand the "secret" of Starbucks is no secret

Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time is by the Chairman of the company.

Starbucks and Retail or musing about "upscaling" Prince George's County

Howard Johnson restaurants and hotels once dotted the countryside, just like Starbucks are seemingly ubiquitous in Washington, DC.

Most of us ex-suburbanites must remember the Howard Johnson's restaurants (and motels) dotting the exit ramps of the Interstates. Don't you miss that orange roof?

If you're not from a seaboard area, chances are before Red Lobster came to your community, the first place you ever had clams was a Howard Johnson's. As Andrew Cassel, business columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer puts it in his column, "A simple stimulus for urban development," "And just as Howard Johnson's did for cross-country motorists in the 1950s, a Starbucks in an urban neighborhood today sends an appealing signal that's good for business."

In the last few weeks, the Post and other papers have reported on a new citizen-driven effort to attract higher quality retail to Prince George's County. The article "New Group Pitches Upscale Retail," from the Gazette Newspapers, covers the sentiment pretty well--

County and business leaders have stepped up their efforts in recent years to lure high-end retailers to Prince George's County. Now a group of residents, frustrated with promises of Nordstrom and the reality of discount stores, has formed to lobby developers directly. On Monday, with Beltway Plaza -- a 900,000-square-foot Greenbelt shopping center filled with discount stores -- as a backdrop, three county residents held a news conference to launch the nonprofit Upscale Prince George's.

And while they commended County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) and local business leaders for pursuing high-end retailers to do business in Prince George's, it's time for the county's 850,000 residents to get involved, they said. "I think the county government is doing an excellent job of leverage, but ... the results are very slow," said the Rev. Eugene A. Marriott. "We're not getting the type of turnaround time needed to address the concerns within our lifetime." (...)

Barbara L. Salisbury/The Gazette. "We can no longer be satisfied with the status quo," said Derrick Plummer, a founding member of Upscale Prince George's, a new nonprofit trying to lure high-end retailers to the county.

But still no Nordstrom, Saks or Cheesecake Factory is on the immediate horizon. Another group member, Gregory Holmes, a 35-year resident of Prince George's, said he doesn't want the county to become littered with low-end retailers. "We are here to say that Prince George's would no longer be a dumping ground, and that the voice of these people matter," Holmes said. "There's a shared goal here. The goal is to start the dialogue. Our time is right now."

Even though Prince George's has the highest household income in a predominantly black county in the nation, among the factors working against it is its high crime rate, including record-setting numbers of auto thefts and homicides. Group member Derrick Plummer said that should not deter high-end retailers. "Crime is not unique to Prince George's County," Plummer said. "Crime is all around us. Crime is everywhere you go. We cannot hinder development, simply because in certain areas, there's a small number of people committing crimes in this county. "You shouldn't have to travel 20, 30 miles outside of your own community to get basic services and needs," Plummer said. "We can no longer be satisfied with the status quo."

Post columnist Mark Fisher writes about this effort in "The Bittersweet Taste of Coffee Beyond Reach." "Starbucks says its slow pace in Prince George's has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the lack of the big-box shopping centers that the chain prefers for its suburban locations. And the big boxes have stayed away because of fear of crime, developers say. Jeff Ellison, a 20-year resident of Prince George's who is Starbucks' regional director for most of Maryland, says the problem is that developers "read the paper about Landover and Suitland and they don't realize that this is the home to the most affluent African-American community, so they shy away from building big shopping centers. But that's changing."

Upscale non-coffee drinks are a big component of the Starbucks marketing program. Photo by Joyce Lin/Daily Bruin (UCLA).

Cracking the retail recruitment piece is tough. Still, people justifiably complain about the recruitment of national chains and the failure to nurture locally owned businesses. The Gazette Newspapers appear not to have done a story on Riverdale Books, a bookstore-coffee shop, which until tomorrow is across the street from the Riverdale Park MARC Train Station. They lost their lease, and while there is plenty of spaces available along Rte. 1 between Mt. Rainer and East-West Highway, instead they are "going on hiatus."

Both Fisher and Cassell discuss MapMuse and the mapping of Starbucks locations. Cassell writes "The fast-growing nationwide coffeehouse chain had become a kind of indicator of urban vitality. A Starbucks in the neighborhood suggested an upwardly mobile population and a market for residential and commercial growth."

MapMuse Starbucks locator

I think this is a particularly relevant point to PG County.

I mentioned that I interviewed for a community development manager job in that county. In preparing for the interview, it occurred to me that while the communities along Rhode Island Avenue look to DC for arts-related success and vitality (i.e., through the Gateway Arts District), they should also look to the research and creativity centered around the University of Maryland campus, and think about how to leverage that vitality going south on Rte. 1 towards the District line.

While UMD is one of the top 50 academic research institutions in the U.S., there is virtually no discussion about the "creative class" in the context of Prince George's County. Do a google search yourself with the criteria "creative class" and "prince george's county." Today, as in January, there are less than 50 hits.

Illustration from the Boston Globe.

Retail attraction isn't just a version of "if you build it they will come." There are a lot of factors at work.

I thought that Hyattsville should try to position the Rte. 1 corridor retail strategy vis-a-vis the greater PG effort, along the lines of independent retail business development. They have Franklin's and the John Nelson Gallery already. The new development of the old automobile dealerships would allow for larger floorplate but creative businesses like a Buffalo Billiards, bookstore-cafe, a smaller scale grocery, a Mayorga Cafe comparable to the one on Georgia Avenue etc.

More big boxes is hardly the prescription for creative vitality, and not likely to be the best way of attracting unique retail to Prince George's County.

Our counterparts in Prince George's County also need to check out the resources at www.danth.com and the National Main Street Center.

7th Street SE, Washington, DC.

Can Upscale Prince George's make the county cool?

Report on the Union Station Bicycle Station Planning Meeting

Aharon Varady reports on the last week's meeting on the Union Station Bikestation planning meeting:

I think for the presenters (DDOT and Bikestation) it went very well. When the Bikestation is constructed it will be the first such station on the East Coast.

The project is budgeted and should be implemented by June 2006. The bikestation will be built on the west side of Union Station near where the AMC Cinema sign is located. It's something of a dead zone now, so this would be a great improvement. The station would also be located adjacent to where the Metropolitan Branch Trail would be.

"Current conditions."

We were presented with three designs for the station, the differences being where on First Street the Bikestation would be located: abutting Union Station, separating two lanes of traffic on First, or farthest west on First. Jim Sebastian and others present indicated they disliked the former and of the latter two, preferred the design for the station to be between the two lanes of traffic.

Site plan alternatives.

The Bikestation will be a public/private partnership. Besides bike parking and bike rental parking, there will also be space for a bike mechanic and sale of fitness bars and the like. So bike stores like Citybikes (also present at the meeting) will probably compete with bids to get dibs on the space once the station opens. The Bikestation looks like it has plenty of potential and I was excited about it coming out of the meeting. I definitely think it will add momentum to progress on the Metropolitan Branch Trail, as well.

Aharon made scans of 8 pages of documents distributed at the meeting. They are available online here.

District of Columbia Bicycling Master Plan.

The DDOT website has been updated in the last couple days with information on this meeting. You can view two presentations from the July 20, 2005 public meeting: 1) the presentation on Bike Stations in general and 2) the presentation the conceptual design for the DC facility.

Thank you Aharon for this report!

Punting on the hard decisions

Today's Examiner has a commentary by Henry Jaffe on "A School plan that might work," which highlights a proposal by DC Chief financial officer Natwar Gandhi, to create a separate "DC School Construction Authority" to develop and execute a plan for rehabilitating DC's school buildings.

Government agencies have to satisfy so many different constituencies that often, decision-makers avoid hard decisions and making substantive choices and focusing, spreading around money all over a city, but diminishing the power of this money to achieve critical mass improvements.

So a way to get around this, but a method that tends to limit the amount of public input and oversight, is to create separate government authorities.

Baltimore's incredibly powerful Baltimore Development Corporation is one, DC's National Capital Revitalization Corporation or the new Anacostia Waterfront Corporation are other examples. (Recently, while on appeal currently, a Maryland judge ruled that the BDC is exempt from State of Maryland open meeting requirements, despite the fact that the organization has control over city-owned property and monies.)

So too are local community development corporations, although many such entities have never accomplished all that much, in DC or elsewhere. (See Randy Stoecker's paper, "The Community Development Corporation Model of Urban Redevelopment: A Political Economy Critique and An Alternative" for an explanation of why this often is the case.)

Robert Moses.

I don't know if it started with Robert Moses in New York, but he certainly was one of the leading utilizers of such corporate structures. (See Robert Caro's The Power Broker.)

More on tourism, examples from Philly and St. Augustine

(I forgot to mention that the Philadelphia Business Journal actually has a twice-monthly column on tourism. That's a beat that the Post and the Washington Business Journal need to add...)

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer has a story on the impact of the recent Dali exhibit, "Lucrative impact of Dalí show on region: Dalígoers also stayed to eat, sleep, shop and sightsee, a survey found, boosting the local economy $55 million.") AP photo.

And these articles from earlier in the week: "Turf war over, they join forces for tourism: Two agencies that sell Philadelphia to visitors are already cooperating in several ventures and have more planned," and "Philadelphia draws more Europeans."

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And if you need some beach reading, you can always read the Heritage Tourism Assessment for St. Augustine, Florida, which is up on the What's New section of the Heritage tourism section of the National Trust for Historic Preservation website (under Community Building). It's basic, but gives you an idea of what such assessments do.

We need one for DC. Granted, Cultural Tourism DC's Capital Assets by Kathy Smith is in part such a document.

Who ♥ DC? -- More about DC tourism

Closed for (Organizational) Repair: DC's City Museum. (Photo from www.dceventphoto.com)

There are three emails here from the H-DC email list, spanning from last July to January, about the demise of the City Museum.
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I think it would be worthwhile using this article ("City Museum on Shaky Ground: After 14 Months, Visitors and Cash Are in Short Supply") as a jumping off point for discussing some of the issues related to cultural tourism and DC, as a way for the cultural marketing-history-tourism community to get a better understanding of these issues, in hopes of making sound decisions that benefit our organizations and the community. I have some thoughts about this and I'll throw them out hoping others will chime in...

First, I think that the City Museum is a great concept but that the idea of cultural tourism in our neighborhoods is a tougher sell than people think. Most people come to the city with very fixed tourism ideas centered around the national experience (Capitol, Supreme Court, National Mall, and to a lesser extent visiting Alexandria and Georgetown, etc.) and the national centers of culture, specifically the Smithsonian Museums, and in particular the Air and Space Museum. "Market development," or teaching this market segment "new tricks" is very time consuming and expensive.

I think it would be very useful for all of us in the broad cultural marketing-museums-tourism-historic preservation communities to see some solid research that analyzes the various market segments of those that travel to DC on work or for leisure. Is anyone familiar with such published research? I have seen speeches about the importance of Washington as an international destination (by Bill Hanbury and J.W. Marriott). Now I believe this, but this was also a campaign of puffery designed to promote Washington for the 2012 Olympics.

Does WCTC or others conduct and release this research to the broader interest community? Does Cultural Tourism DC? Does the Smithsonian regularly publish and distribute their visitor statistics and surveys? (n.b. for data from the Smithsonian click here, for reports on the DC tourism market from WCTC, click here.) Does the National Park Service? I have seen figures in articles in the Washington Post, or recounted in speeches, but I have never seen such sent to this list for example.

n.b. The market for cultural heritage tourism is well defined and strong. Is DC doing the best job it can marketing to this segment? I'm not criticizing, I'm just asking. I see the results of the work by WCTC in articles such as about Eastern Market in the Baltimore Sun. In my opinion, CTDC is doing phenomenal work with the history trails and their broad project in Shaw/U Street which is a great model for those of us in other neighborhoods around the city.

Recently I have been exposed to the ideas of "local and national heritage areas" (the ideas have been around for awhile) and it's a useful way for thinking about tapping into a region's cultural resources-assets, coordinating efforts, and marketing an area more broadly. This is the overall methodology that guides CulturalTourismDC (although I think various efforts across the city aren't necessarily coordinated).

But I have learned that Baltimore, which has a designated local heritage area, as well as more than one state-designated arts district, has combined cultural efforts into the "Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts," which is a city agency. This agency actually mounts a number of the big street festivals in Baltimore including Artscape.

Second, speaking of market research, it should have been understood that most convention goers were unlikely consumers of the City Museum's offerings. Such visitors come to the city for a convention, be it FOSE etc., but unless it is a specific history-related convention, it is probably difficult to sell add-on neighborhood-based cultural tourism, especially with the limited time and money of convention goers and the fact that the local story has to compete with the "national story." In such situations, business-tourists are likely to go with the national stuff, and leave the local for another time. (The success of the City Museum with special events makes sense. Evening events in cultural facilities tend to be one of the big tie ins to conventions generally, even if people don't get out to many other local venues during their stay.)

Again, this isn't a criticism of the City Museum. The Phillips Collection and the Corcoran share the same issues vis-a-vis the Smithsonian museums -- "local vs. national," "pay vs. free." It would be useful to have a broader discussion about these organizations and their marketing strategies given their situation.

cf. Recent discussion of the broad TIF legislation to fund the expansion of the Corcoran. [Of course, this situation has changed significantly re the Corcoran. They've dropped their Gehry-designed expansion plans, and the director left. cf./2, this interesting idea from Blake Gopnik on having the Corcoran focus on photograpy--"Memo to: The Corcoran Re: Sharpening Your Focus." Note that DCist disagrees, but I think they missed the point somewhat, this is an idea about focus and differentiation in an extremely competitive environment.)

Third, of course the gorilla in the room is the experience of the International Spy Musem, which is going gangbusters, charging a lot of moneyand having more than 700,000 visitors in their first year. Is the multimedia experience the way to go, are cultural experiences to be mediated (the underground Visitor Center for the U.S. Capitol that is under construction) rather than experienced directly (the U.S. Capitol)?
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There is a workshop conducted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation called "Great Tours." It focuses on house museums and historic sites, but really it's a methodology, a charrette if you will, on understanding your site, and developing the themes that lead to the best stories for explaining your collection and what your site has to offer.

Similarly, a few months back I attended an abbreviated "How to Turn a Place Around" workshop done by the Project for Public Spaces as a training for Scenic America state coordinators. Both experiences convinced me about the value of participation-workshops bringing together people with a wide variety of skill sets and experiences. I think charrettes are great, but without providing some "basic training" it's hard to achieve best practices and vision, unless the workshop conveners are committed to it.

The Great Tours workshop and handbook opened my eyes to the necessity of "selling" historic districts by focusing on the neighborhood themes and stories that place specific neighborhoods within the context of local, national, and even international history. The PPS workshop demonstrated so clearly that a group of knowledgeable advocates, working through the PPS approach, can come up with plans and programs in short period of time that far exceed the results of commissioned "professional firm" plans. It's what Wright and Fung call "empowered deliberative democracy" in the book Deepening Democracy. (Lately I have been thinking that land use and development issues such as these are the locus for the most significant participation in the polity on the part of most citizens.)

I think there's something to be said for considering a public charrette for museum, heritage, preservation, tourism folks in the city, around the City Museum issue, and the role of cultural heritage in the civic life of the city, not just as an economic development tool. Focusing on DC's heritage, architecture, and history strictly as a tourism tool does, at some level, diminish the intrinsic value of history and heritage in our society.

The Trust could probably be induced to doing the Great Tours workshop in DC, although it would have to be reconfigured to deal specifically with theissues we need to grapple with, rather than the "academic exercise" of the fictitious Caleb Crawley House. In any case, knowing and celebrating this history is essential to the continued success and livability of Washington, DC "beyond the monuments."
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Lately, I have pondering the Comprehensive Plan revision process (www.inclusivecity.org) and I am coming to the conclusion that it mixes up two very different thrusts, developing a strategic plan for the City of Washington and developing a plan to guide and direct land use and development. Granted that the two are inextricably linked, but I think failing to fully focus on either means that a lot gets missed.

The recent thread on the City Museum leads me to believe that there are two major holes in the "Strategic Plan" aspects for the City in the revision process as it relates to culture and arts:

(1) there is no section on "Arts and Cultural Development" in the Comprehensive Plan;
(2) there probably should be a related section on "Tourism Development and Management." Neither is included in the extant current Comprehensive Plan although Historic Preservation, which serves many objectives: economic development; tourism; neighborhood stabilization; housing; cultural development, etc., does have a section.
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New stuff:

Lately, the City Museum folks have been planning, without public input, a combination of a visitors center and the museum. The biggest problem perhaps with the Museum aspect is that people were so enamored with the location and the proximity to the Convention Center that they didn't look at the facility in terms of its support for museum functions. The building's too small, there are few galleries, and they can't accommodate various types of artifacts (such as vehicles), etc.

But there is something to be said for a Visitors Center-Museum combination. Baltimore gets the Visitor Center right. And with their new Heritage Trail, like DC's extant trails in places like Downtown, Southwest, and Capitol Hill, they actually run the tours from the Visitors Center. Imagine if the City Museum had been central as a staging point for heritage tours around the city of Washington.


Baltimore Visitor Center. Lots of tourist information and printed materials, staff (and trained volunteer staff), and a film. The film needs work and needs to be listenable in languages other than English, at least for a DC version. And they need a diorama explaining Baltimore's public transit options. No history though, other than brochures.

Tourism reaches record levels ... in NYC. Where do we find such data for DC?

Who doesn't love NYC?

Today's NY Post reports, in "N.Y.'S OPEN ARM$ ," about record numbers of tourists visiting NYC. From the article:

Tourists are flying into New York and sleeping in its hotels in record numbers, tourism officials giddily announced yesterday. The hotel-occupancy rate normally hovers around 80 percent for New York City in June. This year, it reached 90.4 percent, the highest ever for the month. Crunch the numbers and you get about 57,000 booked hotel rooms per night. "When we have record occupancy in hotels, that translates into people actually feeding their families. It just goes through the whole economy," Mayor Bloomberg said at yesterday's press conference celebrating the reopening of a tourist kiosk in City Hall Park.

October is usually the busiest month for the city's hotel industry, mostly due to high business travel and the mild fall weather, officials said. The highest occupancy rate ever — 94 percent — was recorded in October 1996. For the record, there are more than 70,000 hotel rooms in the city, which recently set yet another record — for airport arrivals. From January to April, more than 15 million people landed at JFK, La Guardia and Newark airports — nearly 5 million of them from outside the country. (...)

In a pitch to get even more tourists to visit, the city has partnered with The History Channel to promote New York's rich legacy. The cable network will pump about $19.5 million into several projects, including free TV ads, historic walking and trolley tours — and a chance for five people to win three-day trips to the Big Apple. The ads are to run nationally — and reach the station's 88 million viewers — over the next 31/2 years. On Aug. 15-19, The History Channel will run nightly shows about New York landmarks.
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About two months ago I sent a query with similar questions to the Washington Convention and Tourism Authority. Still no response. And I continually compare the pretty lackluster www.washington.org tourism site to much better efforts elsewhere, such as the NYC tourism promotion website or even Destination Winnipeg (Manitoba!).

Where's DC's campaign with History Channel or Travel Channel?

Tourists determinedly taking Washington.

There needs to be a tourism "economic development and management" plan as well as a "cultural resources development and management" plan for the City. And they need to be available, just like the various Office of Planning or DC Department of Transportation Plans and Studies are online.

I wrote about this a lot last fall on H-DC, in a thread that discussed the closing of the City Museum. I will dig up, edit and repost some of that writing here.

Nominate your town as a 'distinctive destination'

Annapolis. Photo from Maryland Delivered.

Similar to the Preserve America designation as discussed in a blog entry a couple days ago, the process of completing an application for special community designations, applying to become a heritage area, etc. is a great way to inventory and call attention to your community's assets, build support for preservation and authenticity, etc.
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The Associated Press
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Is your city or town a great place to visit?

Consider nominating it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of "Distinctive Destinations" for 2006.
The National Trust bestows this title on 12 communities each year that have a strong sense of place and offer authentic experiences to visitors. Criteria include a commitment to historic preservation; dynamic downtowns with locally owned small businesses; interesting architecture; cultural diversity; and walkability. Previous winners have included Annapolis, Md.; Natchez, Miss.; Oberlin, Ohio; Burlington, Vt. and Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

For details, visit www.nationaltrust.org/ddd or call (202) 588-6141. The contest ends Nov. 4.

Saratoga Springs in the late 1800s.

Smarter Sprawl in Louisville

This is my take on Norton Commons, the New Urbanist development 15+ miles from the center of Louisville. It appears in the current issue of LEO Weekly, one of the alternative weeklies in Louisville, Kentucky. The other week, the paper featured articles on housing, which I mentioned in the blog.

Smarter Sprawl

Last year, I had the opportunity to be charmed by Louisville while attending the annual conference of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Attending the AIA Home tour before the conference started, and getting a tour of some of the projects involving the University of Louisville’s Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods was an added plus (thank you, Professor Gilderbloom). And by the way, Marc Issacs’ houses are some of the most beautiful new construction I’ve seen.

Nonetheless, I took two important and rueful lessons home with me. First, I learned that the combination of a city and county government might balance tax revenues and services between traditional urban areas and suburbs, but it doesn’t necessarily reduce sprawl. That requires additional policies and practices that re-balance development between the region’s core and the outlying areas.

Second, I was appalled by the prospect of Norton Commons. While articles in The Courier-Journal discussed how the New Urbanist design of the houses will reflect the great historic architecture of neighborhoods like Old Louisville and Cherokee Triangle, the articles avoided mentioning that Norton Commons is out in the middle of cornfields 21 miles from Louisville’s downtown, straddling the border of Oldham and Jefferson counties, and appears to be miles from anything else. If this doesn’t contribute to sprawl, I don’t know what does.Meanwhile, the center of Louisville has many empty blocks. “Smarter Sprawl” or Smart Growth, you have to make a choice.

Richard Layman
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From Mapquest

From: 335 W Broadway Louisville, KY 40202-2105 US (The Brown Hotel)
To: Prospect, KY 40059 US

Driving Directions
1. Start out going EAST on W BROADWAY/US-150 toward S 3RD ST/KY-1020 S. (0.30 miles)
2. Turn LEFT onto S BROOK ST. (0.48 miles)
3. Turn RIGHT onto E LIBERTY ST/US-60 TRUCK E/US-31E E. (0.19 miles)
4. Merge onto I-65 N toward I-64/JEFFERSONVILLE/INDIANAPOLIS/I-71. (0.64 miles)
5. Merge onto I-71 N via EXIT 137 toward CINCINNATI/I-64/LEXINGTON. (6.03 miles)
6. Merge onto I-264 W via EXIT 5. (0.69 miles)
7. Take the US-42 E exit- EXIT 22- toward KY-22. (0.28 miles)
8. Turn LEFT onto BROWNSBORO RD/US-42 N. Continue to follow US-42 N. (5.49 miles)
9. Turn RIGHT onto COVERED BRIDGE RD/KY-329. (0.83 miles)
10. Turn RIGHT onto WESTOVER DR. (0.44 miles)
11. Turn RIGHT onto CHESTNUT HILL DR. (0.13 miles)
12. End at Prospect, KY 40059 US

Total Estimated Time: 24 minutes
Total Distance: 15.50 miles

Population Change In Kentucky's 120 Counties 1960-2000 -- In 2003, the City of Louisville merged with Jefferson County and created one city-county municipality.

Turning Around "Downtown"

Somehow I missed this report from the Brookings Institution: "Turning Around Downtown: Twelve Steps to Revitalization;" when it came out a few months ago. Its 12 steps are applicable to urban revitalization in neighborhood commercial districts, not just in a downtown or "Central Business Districts". I do think the paper could talk a bit more about transparency and participation, but all in all it's informative and useful.

"Though every downtown is different there are still common revitalization lessons that can be applied anywhere. While any approach must be customized based on unique physical conditions, institutional assets, consumer demand, history, and civic intent, this paper lays out the fundamentals of a downtown turnaround plan and the unique "private/public" partnership required to succeed. Beginning with visioning and strategic planning to the reemergence of an office market at the end stages, these 12 steps form a template for returning "walkable urbanity" downtown."

The 12 steps are:

1. Capture the Vision
2. Develop a Strategic Plan
3. Forge a Healthy Private/Public Partnership
4. Make the Right Thing Easy
5. Establish Business Improvement Districts and Other Non-Profits
6. Create a Catalytic Development Company
7. Create an Urban Entertainment District (note: think create "destinations" or "destination activities")
8. Develop a Rental Housing Market (note: think "add residents")
9. Pioneer an Affordable Strategy
10. Focus on For-Sale Housing
11. Develop a Local-Serving Retail Strategy (note: "complemented by the patronage of those attracted to destination activities")
12. Re-create a Strong Office Market (note: think incubation of start-up innovation, "creative class" activities as well)

Green infrastructure...public assets

Green infrastructure? Flickr photo by Liz Hurley.

Today's USA Today reports in "Some cities are finding money does grow on trees," that "Cities are starting to treat trees less as decoration and more like public utilities now that they can calculate how much money trees save by cutting air pollution, storm runoff and energy costs."

Relatedly, instead of selling off, piecemeal, municipal assets such as buildings, shouldn't we come together as a community and decide how we want our city to be going forward, and what assets we have, what we need, and how to utilize such assets to enhance and extend our quality of life?

Old Bruce School at Kenyon Street and Sherman Avenue. Up for declaration as surplus property...

As long as each government agency, particularly the DC Public Schools, the DC Libraries, and the Parks and Recreation Department see their "asset portfolio" as (1) not being ultimately owned and directed by the citizens; (2) having little connection to other municipal assets; and (3) use doesn't need to be coordinated with meta-objectives such as "enhancing the community's capacity to learn, grow, and apply knowledge" well then it's pretty easy to sell off properties and to continue to underutilize such assets.

Common Assets is a national organization dealing with some of these issues. The website isn't very informative, but the concept is important and needs to be applied at a more micro level.

National Land Use Planning Comes to the United States or at least Metro Washington

Congressman Tom Davis probably has more power over DC than the Mayor... Photo by Melina Mara for the Washington Post.

Last night I had a conversation with a couple and they asked me, "What would you do to rebuild a city like Pittsburgh or Baltimore?"

I often ask myself that question, figuring that working on revitalization in DC is easier, because we have a strong real estate market.

I think the answer is "relative," and requires rebalancing development between the center city and the suburbs. As I have said many many times as an example, Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties in Michigan (the tri-county area including the City of Detroit) have only 200,000 more residents today compared to 1960. The difference is that 1 million of these people left Detroit to move out into the suburbs. And these days, as the blog entry on "The Exurbanites" from a couple days ago discussed, people are moving farther and farther out.

The only "solution" in the U.S. is probably urban growth boundaries and a forced refocusing back on the center. In the UK, they have national land use planning, which puts serious controls on sprawl. However, UGBs aren't going to happen any time soon, especially with the growth and vehemence of the property rights movement, and the turnback of urban growth planning in Oregon via Measure 37. More and more sprawl will result. In the interim, traditional center cities must work to improve their competitive position vis-a-vis their suburbs, despite all the financial and other advantages enjoyed by the suburban development model.

However, we are getting a dose of National Federal Planning in the Washington area. Today's papers discuss the welcome proposal from Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia to add funding to Metropolitan Washington's transit system. See "Bill Offering Metro $1.5 Billion Insists On More Oversight, Dedicated Funding" in the Washington Post. But the bill includes special provisions directing WMATA policies about developing particular parcels in Fairfax County, at the Takoma Metro in DC, and at Largo, each put in by various Congressional Representatives. Viola, national planning....

Part of this is directed at a smart growth project in Fairfax County called Metro West. See "Welcome to Fairfax--If You Vote Red," by Post columnist Marc Fisher, and "Commuter Behavior Key to MetroWest", and "Lawmaker Steps In on Va. Growth: Congressman Plans to Block Land Sale Near Vienna Metro," also from the Post.

From the article: "The bill says Metro can have the funds only if it hires an inspector general, who would track the way the agency is managed and spends its money, investigate employee reports of wrongdoing and publicly report the findings. The legislation, a complex proposal that also includes detailed instructions about several Metro land deals pending in Virginia and Maryland, would add two seats to the Metro board of directors for representatives of the federal government. "To get a billion and a half dollars out of my colleagues, they're not going to leave this thing up to the District and the Virginia and Maryland locals," Davis said.

Graphic from the Washington Post.

Co-optation of the environment-green agenda

Photo: David Guralnick / The Detroit News. The Fairlane Green shopping center, set to open in the fall, will focus on the environment with features that include green spaces, bio-swales and energy-reducing building features.

In "Allen Park project adopts green approach: Shopping center will be built on a landfill and include environmentally friendly features, parks," today's Detroit News reports about how Ford Motor Land Development Corporation is building a "green" environmentally-friendly strip shopping center. Two weeks ago, Wal*Mart announced its "sustainable" store in McKinney, Texas, complete with a windmill to generate electricity. There is going to be a webcast seminar by the journal Consulting-Specifying Engineer about the new" sustainable" Wal*Mart.

And today, "Whole Foods Market Inc., Austin, Texas, and BP Solar International LLC, Frederick, Md., celebrated the opening of a Princeton, N.J. Whole Foods store featuring a 126.7-kilowatt solar roof on Tuesday. The roof, powered by a BP solar array, produces approximately 15 percent of the store's energy, saving Whole Foods more than $515,000 through a rebate with the New Jersey Clean Energy Program. The system was installed by Advanced Solar Products. BP Solar has plans to work with more companies to safely install solar products for customers. BP Solar also has plans to sell solar power systems directly to consumers through a partnership with The Home Depot." Actually this isn't so bad. It makes sense to me that we use the roofs of buildings to generate electricity...

But as long as everybody drives everywhere, these efforts are worth little, and aren't much more than window dressing...

Today's editorial cartoon by KAL of the Baltimore Sun.

Extending Macy's National Brand

JULY 28, 2005 -- Federated Department Stores Inc., Cincinnati, announced today that it plans to convert around 330 department stores nationwide to the Macy's brand in 2006. The company will convert regional department stores that it will acquire upon completion of its pending merger with The May Department Stores Co., St. Louis. Overall, 10 May brands will be renamed Macy's, including Filene's, Hecht's and Kaufmann's. A decision regarding the Marshall Field's name has not been reached, and the Lord & Taylor's brand will not be converted. The company has identified 68 duplicate locations that it plans to divest upon completion of the merger. The remaining stores will include employees from both Federated and May locations.

Not just a car company, Cadillac is a transportation company...

Victor and Terri Church with their Cadillac bicycles at their home in Rochester Hills. Cadillac has entered into licensing agreement with Kent Bicycles to create Cadillac line of bikes in hopes the vehicle brand will become more associated with younger folks. (The Detroit News/David Coates).

(The Detroit News/David Coates).

Today's online Detroit News reports, in "Cadillac spins new sales with branded bicycles: Two-wheelers sport sleek and sharp design, attracting more buyers who are younger" that Cadillac has licensed its logo for bicycles, and is selling them through some of its car dealerships. Now if we can only get rappers to use these bikes in some music videos to increase the street cred of bicycling, comparable to that of the "Slade" or Cadillac Escalade SUV. See "Escalade scores with athletes, rappers," from USA Today.

Photo by David L'Hoste.
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This is a take on Ted Leavitt's book Marketing Imagination. The book came out in the 1980s and for those in marketing, it's worth re-reading every year or two to encourage some rethinking. Anyway, he makes the point that GM forgot that it's a "transportation" company, not a car company.

In thinking about this, I think GM thought back then that it was a vehicle company, even if they didn't think they were in transportation. Back then GM made Terex construction equipment, buses, and locomotive engines in addition to cars.

Mural Arts program in Philly

Mural at 21st and Chesnut Streets, Philadelphia. Flickr Photo by Philanthropoid.

Dan responded to my Beautiful Decay piece, commenting about the difference between graffiti and art-murals-community-building. I wholeheartedly agree. Public art is a big interest of mine, and I am more interested in the mural end of things, rather than the painted cows or elephants (although I am more okay with functional public art like benches).

Steven Heff waits for a bus on a bench decorated with a Laurel and Hardy theme on Oak Park Avenue in Tinley Park. Twenty-five benches are decorated along five blocks. (Chicago Tribune photo by Ed Wagner)

Anyway, John MacDonald, from Philadelphia's Mural Arts program writes--

Philadelphia magazine's 2005 Best of Philly section to recognize the Mural Arts Program. Issue hits newsstands Friday!

Philadelphia magazine's Best of Philly is not only a celebration of Philadelphia-area businesses, it is also an opportunity for them to give back to their community. Each year, Philadelphia magazine recognizes the efforts of a local nonprofit organization which is doing their part to make Philadelphia a great place to live.

This year, Philadelphia magazine has chosen the Mural Arts Program for their admirable crusade to beautify our city and inspire its youth. Philadelphia Magazine's Best of Philly issue hits newsstands this Friday. Be sure to pick up your copy! And tune in to CBS-3 Thursday, July 28 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, July 31st at 11 a.m. for an inside look at the upcoming August Best of Philly issue.

Borf photo from Flickr, by Michael Oliver.

Blaming the building in Baltimore -- when your tool is a gun, you think only about shooting

The Baltimore Sun reports on the yanking of a certificate of occupancy for a multi-unit apartment that is the site of a great deal of disorder. Northwestern Police District Deputy Major Mary Ellerman is quoted as saying "The only way to rid this area of the problem is to demolish." See "City targets landlord in new tack to rid apartments of drugs, guns."

What about receivership?

Take over the building and get it running right.

It is possible.

This way you displace 20+ households and leave a building to a worse fate. And tearing yet another hole in the fabric of the neighborhood does no one any good.

406 H Street, vacant for more than 20 years.
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From previous testimony to DC City Council on these issues (with particular concern about historic properties)

1. Shortsighted nuisance abatement policies too often lead to demolition of historic properties.

Despite the demand for housing in DC’s core, many properties remain vacant, tied up by speculators who are aggressively unconcerned about how their behavior harms nearby residents and entire neighborhoods. Too often, demolition-by-neglect is used as a tool by speculators to assemble property for large-scale development and the conversion of predominately residential areas to commercial use. In the meantime, our neighborhoods are held hostage. When these buildings come down, it’s easy to think that since we have thousands and thousands of historic buildings, losing one doesn’t make much difference.

It does. Every demolished building becomes a vacant lot—negative space—defined by neglect.

Condemning a building and ordering it razed does not abate a nuisance. It simply creates a new nuisance just as persistent, damaging, and long lasting.


2. A Revised Nuisance Property Law is Necessary

In our opinion, the primary tool that the City employs to abate nuisance properties is demolition. Whether or not this is the intent of Council is unclear, but the fact is, by default, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs is setting prevailing neighborhood stabilization policies through its regulatory activities, and their actions appear to lean towards the razing of properties, rather than the promotion of rehabilitation and habitation.

Not only does tearing down a property destroy unrecoverable assets, it creates a new nuisance in its place, one even harder to abate. While it is true that housing inspections, "Clean it and lien it" and other fines and sanctions exist, such sanctions have impact only if property owners are truly interested in maintaining the building. If not, a property owner prefers to let it rot, and fines will have no impact. A property owner committed to “demolition-by-neglect” can afford the middling fines. The fine for demolishing a building illegally is only $500–chump change to someone trying to build something new that might not otherwise be allowed. By contrast, consider that in San Antonio, fines and penalties for demolition by neglect and illegal demolition are set at the cost of reconstruction. “Market value” fines are likely to be strong deterrents.

While the DC Council passed a new law concerning vacant and nuisance properties, it is unclear how successful this law will be in practice. I am not hopeful.

(a.) The law puts great demands on the Executive Branch, particularly the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and it is evident through its words, deeds, and staffing that this agency is unable to meet these new demands.

(b.) Many DCRA inspectors lack critical expertise in assessing historic properties including critical structural engineering expertise, and they appear to be under-concerned about the importance of urban design and form. Given that more than one-third of buildings in this city are more than 60 years old, this knowledge deficit critically under-serves the city. The fact is, most properties can be rehabilitated, in most cases for less than the cost of razing and clearing a property and building new. To be fair to DCRA inspectors, they cannot be expected to know this if they aren’t trained in these assessment techniques, and if the system is stacked in favor of demolition.

(c.) The new law requires the identification and provision of monies to support the creation and operation of a revolving fund for property acquisition and rehabilitation. Money has not been forthcoming, paralyzing action in the interim.

(d.) Despite the existence of current laws requiring maintenance and habitability, many properties seem to escape the notice of inspectors for years and years, until finally the owner requests a demolition permit.

(e.) The Board of Condemnation of Insanitary Buildings, an entity within DCRA, is responsible for the abatement of nuisance properties but it tends instead to simply order their razing. Again, housing policies at the highest levels of the District government should favor the rehabilitation of historic properties, particularly houses, for many reasons. The “out of sight, out of mind” BCIB is perhaps operating in ways counter to the expectations of the City Council.

(f.) With regard to BCIB, it is troubling to discover that while this once was a board made up primarily of citizens, with a limitation of no more than one-third government officials, today the board is comprised predominately of government officials from DCRA, DPW, DHCD, and the Department of Administrative Services. Such officials are susceptible to lobbying by property owners and their representatives, and it is likely that these officials don’t always seek to have the properties independently evaluated by professionals with specific expertise in the stabilization and rehabilitation of historic properties.

While the Vacant and Nuisance Property Act does allow the District Government to take control of properties, this provision is unfunded, and it is likely that this authority will only be used once properties are too far gone to rehabilitate. In short, where are the real tools to take control of properties in order to stabilize and rehabilitate them, in situations where the owner has evinced no desire to maintain them in a habitable condition? This is especially important in DC where so much of the residential housing is attached. The beautiful rows of houses that make our neighborhoods so distinctive are endangered and adjoining residents are at special risk when a single row house becomes a nuisance.

Demolition punches gaping holes in the streetscape, and radically degrades neighborhood character. This kind of demolition of undesignated but eligible properties is going on all over the city and is counter to the neighborhood stabilization and improvement initiatives that the Council and Mayor endeavor to implement.

It is essential that the City Council revisit these issues. The Vacant and Nuisance Property Act and the Housing Act of 2002 are not yet enough to ensure that properties are being rehabilitated rather than destroyed. Agency actions need to be consonant with the desire revitalize neighborhood residential and commercial districts.

3. A Model Receivership Statute For Proactive Abatement of Nuisance Properties is Necessary

One way to address defects in current laws and regulatory activities is for the Council to pass legislation authorizing the appointment of independent receiverships able to take control of properties in order to abate evident public nuisances. Fines and inspections aren’t enough. And, the failure to fund the revolving fund authorized in the Vacant and Nuisance Property Act shows the necessity of identifying and allowing other interested parties to act proactively to revitalize and stabilize our neighborhood residential and commercial districts.

All the many activities that the DC Government is engaged in to restore our neighborhoods and bring people back to our city, from the City Living Campaign to the DC Main Streets program, are undercut by recalcitrant property owners who feel no obligation to maintain their properties. Acting only after a neighborhood suffers years of avoidable neglect fails all of us committed to a livable city.

I have lived in my neighborhood for most of 16 years. There are properties that were boarded up when I moved here – former corner stores and large and small houses, and commercial buildings on H Street–that are still boarded up today. Meanwhile a great deal of renovation is going on, and housing prices have as much as tripled due to increased interest and confidence in the neighborhood as a result of the construction of a new subway station on the northern edge of the neighborhood. But that has had little impact on absentee property owners with no motivation or desire to improve and/or sell their properties, or those trying to assemble large tracts of land for redevelopment.

(The new Class 3 property tax assessments will make a difference. But there are loopholes that property owners are using to avoid being categorized as a Class 3 property, and because these properties carry extremely low assessments due to their dilapidated condition, it may take longer than we wish to have the impact we are looking for—to have property owners put the properties back in play, because it is too expensive to let them sit.)

Nuisance properties degrade our neighborhoods and abet disorder. These “vacant” buildings tend to be problems and eyesores–places for illegally dumped trash to pile up and for loitering, squatting, drug use, prostitution and the like. With the enactment of a receivership law, these buildings can once again contribute to their neighborhoods.

The State of Ohio has a strong Receivership Statute that allows nonprofit organizations to petition the local Housing Court with a plan for the abatement of an identified public nuisance. (Ohio Revised Code; Title 37: Health-Safety-Morals; Chapter 3767, Nuisances; Section 3767.41, Buildings constituting public nuisance; action to enforce regulations; and receivership.)

The Cleveland Restoration Society uses this law to take control of properties that are being "demolished by neglect" and takes forceful action to stabilize and/or to fully rehabilitate the property. They are motivated to do this to preserve buildings in historic districts—but the effect is preservation and stabilization of Cleveland neighborhoods.

The Housing Court can clear title once the nuisance is abated, and the property can be sold to people who agree to live in and maintain the property. Covenants in the sales agreement ensure that the property will be maintained and protected. The best way to abate a nuisance is to fix it and get the house lived-in. Long term, receivership may be one of the best ways to preserve, stabilize, and revitalize our neighborhoods. And judging by how the program seems to be working, independent receiverships are likely to be more effective and more neighborhood-oriented and open to community participation than a program like the Home Again Initiative.

It is important to recognize that in Ohio, title is cleared only after the nuisance is abated. Too many nonprofit organizations in DC have been known for acquiring vacant properties, and then letting the property disintegrate further. In Ohio, receivership plans have deadlines, and unsuccessful receiverships are terminated, making it unlikely that the organization will be awarded receivership again.

Receivership could be one of the best tools we have to preserve houses—affordable houses—and neighborhoods in the District of Columbia. Without it there is no real way to force the hand of property owners who otherwise have no intention of maintaining habitable buildings. The option of receivership, with the ability to clear and award title to guarantee resale and habitation, would give residents and community organizations the ability to be proactive, rather than reactive and helpless. Besides, having the authority to force receivership will be a strong encouragement to absentee landlords to sell, rather than to sit on their property, and otherwise risk the chance of losing their property without gain. Either way, our neighborhoods win.

Involving the community in school improvement

Since students are outside of school more than they are in school, I am frustrated with lackluster community involvement in the quest for improving our city's schools. I am told that Superintendent Janney is oriented to this, although there is no sight of such now. I wrote in a June blog entry about the success of family learning contracts in some of the poorest areas of Brazil (discussed in a Harvard Business Review article about "positive deviance").

Below is an email from the Asset-Based Community Development listserv, about an schools ABCD-like effort in an area of Boston. Sounds pretty promising, and it is another side of engaging the family, not just the student, into schooling (as opposed to schools).

While I think the state of the schools physical plant is important, it's really more about the mode and intent of "production" while the students are in class. Lamentably, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on improving school physical plants in Kansas City, Missouri as part of a broad desegregation order hasn't really lead to greater voluntary integration... Photo of Crummell School by Peter Sefton.

From Marian Knapp--

I am a community improvement consultant who has worked a lot on health and social issues with small groups, mostly in inner city communities.

A few years ago, I was involved in the design and implementation of an assessment of a cluster of schools in the Boston Public School System. It was an independent study, sponsored by a consortium of prominent institutions (medical care, universities, public schools among others), to determine how these institutions could help kids do better in school in this inner city community. I did not use the ABCD model, but developed a framework that captured multiple dimensions related to the goal. These dimensions were:

1. Children: Focus groups with 300 children grades 2 through 12, including older kids who had dropped out of school (some of whom had been in jail and were returning to get a high school diploma. Purpose of the focus groups was to learn
a. what doing well in school meant to them,
b. what helped them do well in school, and
c. what got in the way of doing well in school.
Their responses were categorized and as you would imagine their responses were very enlightening.

2. Parents, guardians, etc.: Focus groups or interviews with parents asking questions similar to those we asked the children, only focusing on what helped them or got in the way of helping their children.

3. Teachers: Similar to parents.

4. School Administrators: Interviews with 12 school principals - similar questions, only more emphasis on the school as a whole and the larger school system.

5. Inventory: Identified all current programs and other resources in each school, as well as what was available in the nearby community.

6. Demogaphics: Primarily to identify different "first" languages spoken by children and families to determine how well schools were addressing language needs. Also looked at distribution of what neighborhoods the kids were coming from to look at whether services were available in their "home" neighborhoods.

7. Analysis and recommendations: Children, parent, teacher and administrator responses were compared for similarities and differences. The inventory was compared to the categories created from the focus groups and interviews to determine how well current programs matched what study participants said. Recommendations were developed for each school.

I have continued to work in several of the schools, including one where I facilitate a parent group, which has recently completed a parent survey to determine areas for improvement. The results of this survey informed the development of and are included in the schools "whole school improvement plan". I am happy to give you more information if you would find it useful.

Thinking in different boxes

AP reports on Panaderia Taza, a coffee shop in Phoenix targetting the Mexican (remember that all Hispanics are not the same market segment-wise, a point missed in the article) market, with Mexican pastries, a Mexican coffee brand, and cafe con leche, and mexclado con azucar (coffee with sugar)--and their plans for franchising.

I've been thinking about this kind of stuff since last year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which had as an exhibitor, a Haitian company that distributes coffee. I can't find the name of the company at the moment, but it made me think that certain kinds of specialty stores could add country-of-origin based coffee and tea operations to complement their store offerings. Similarly, my brother reports from Miami that there are many many Hispanic coffee shops, some being Cuban, others Dominican-oriented, etc. Panaderia Taza isn't the first...

Panaderia Taza photos by Matt York, Associated Press.


And the New York Times reports on Kaldi, a coffee shop in Ethiopia that copies the Starbucks model, but sells only Ethiopian coffees. See "Addis Ababa Journal: Along With That Caffeine Rush, a Taste of Seattle."

Finally, Ray's is a coffee shop in Philly's Chinatown that sells varietal coffee by the cup, using special brewers called siphons, and has dozens of exotic coffees, each priced separately and brewed to order. (Although I suppose you can do the same with French Press.)

Coffee siphons.

Preserve America program adds component for urban neighborhoods

Communities may apply for special designation as a Preserve America Community, which recognizes communities that:

protect and celebrate their heritage;

use their historic assets for economic development and community revitalization; and

encourage people to experience and appreciate local historic resources through education and heritage tourism programs.

Benefits of designation include:

White House recognition;

certificate of recognition;

Preserve America Community road sign;

authorization to use the Preserve America logo on signs, flags, banners, and promotional materials;

listing in a Web-based Preserve America Community directory;

inclusion in national and regional press releases;

official notification of designation to State tourism offices and visitor bureaus; and

enhanced community visibility and pride.

Four application and designation cycles occur each year. The 2005 application deadlines are March 1, June 1, September 1, and December 1.

Because larger metropolitan areas tend to have distinct historic neighborhoods that are essentially communities within larger urban areas, the Preserve America Community program was expanded July 26, 2005, to include the new Preserve America Community Neighborhood program.

In this program, neighborhoods in metropolitan areas with populations greater than 200,000 persons are eligible for this special designation. For more information on the new Preserve America Community Neighborhood program, read the press release or download the application and guidance (in PDF).

Read the book, watch the movie

Photo: TOM GRALISH / Philadelphia Inquirer. Penn professor Elijah Anderson describes this part of Germantown Avenue, where public transit and retailing join, as a “hyperghetto.”

I write a lot on e-lists and in the blog, about the work of Professor Elijah Anderson of the University of Pennsylvania, and his books Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City and Streetwise. This article from the Philly Inquirer, "Germantown Ave. from top to bottom: Video documentary shows a street of extremes," alerts us to a video made by students from Rutgers University at Camden, to illustrate the book's introduction--which is a tour of the length of Germantown Avenue, starting in the tony neighborhood of Chestnut Hill on the border of Philadelphia and the adjoining county and ending up in the heart of inner city Philadelphia.

Code of the Street is on the reading list for courses at 270 colleges across the country. (Clearly people not familiar with cities need some sort of visual presentation to understand this kind of progression.)

According to the article:

The documentary, based on Anderson's introduction, was produced this spring to assist readers of the book. The video "kind of gives you a different perspective on how the city can go from one extreme, from wealth and poverty in just five miles," said Jackson, who helped shoot the video. The video begins in Chestnut Hill, which Wood noted is often called "the suburb in the city," and ends in the Northern Liberties section. Along the way, Flatley and Wood describe the decline in the appearance of the stores, homes and factories, many of them dilapidated and abandoned.

They note that the village-like shopping district of Chestnut Hill gradually gives way to stores outfitted with burglar bars and riot gates as you move past Mount Airy and into Germantown and North Philadelphia. The premise of Anderson's book is that in communities where factories and other large employers have moved out and poverty has taken hold, a street culture develops that is characterized by a lack of faith in police protection and civil law.

As a result, Anderson writes, a code of the streets emerges, "a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, particularly violence. The rules prescribe both proper comportment and the proper way to respond if challenged, often with violence." In an interview on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill, Anderson said: "This street is historic. It's hard to believe it's the same street down the way.

"We are talking about poverty that can't be laid at the feet of the people. The jobs are not here. When one is unable to find decent work there are negative consequences for communities." Anderson said the problems on Germantown Avenue are mirrored in many U.S. cities. The book, he said, has implications for understanding distressed communities around the country. Wood said that even in areas where the "code of the street" dominates, "there are pockets of resistance and renewal as well."
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The video is online here. The Inquirer article includes a link to a Flash photo slideshow with 29 photos at various points along Germantown Avenue.

This Thursday -- 2nd "Starburst Plaza" Placemaking Workshop for H Street NE/Benning Road

Turning right onto Maryland Avenue from Benning Road

From Karina Ricks, Great Streets Program Manager , 202-671-2542

Turn a ROAD into a PLACE!
2nd "Starburst Plaza" Placemaking Workshop for H Street NE/Benning Road/Bladensburg Road/Maryland Avenue

Thursday, July 28th
6:00 - 9:00PM
Delta Towers Community Room
1400 Florida Ave NE

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) is redesigning the intersection of Benning Road, Maryland Avenue, H Street and Bladensburg Road to improve pedestrian safety and create a new plaza. The meeting will review community-generated ideas for design, use and management of the plaza.

Traffic island between Bladensburg Road and Maryland Avenue
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I hope that people can make this meeting. A vocal, if unrepresentative pro-car constituency has made its voice known. OTOH, I was surprised to hear Karina Ricks say in a meeting, that the models have been studied, and the change in the road and traffic pattern is going through, even if people want to preserve right turn lanes used by about four drivers/hour.

(Why aren't people) Learning from Jane Jacobs

Photo: Preston Keres/The Washington Post. County unveils a $400,000 model of what the National Harbor project will look like.

Michele Dyson is a (once or twice monthly) columnist for the Washington Post, writing about Maryland issues for the back page of the Outlook section. Last Sunday's paper had the column "National Harbor: Think Small to Make It Special," about the gargantuan development coming to Prince George's County along the Potomac River. From her piece:

National Harbor is the largest private investment in the history of Maryland. In essence, it's a $2 billion wager that carries enormous risk. Much of the county's economic future is at stake, along with Peterson's reputation and money. Peterson has said that National Harbor will be his version of Las Ramblas, the grand pedestrian walkway near Barcelona's port district. But Barcelona is Spain's second-largest city. It hosted the 1992 Olympics, and its port is one of the most important in Europe. Along Las Ramblas, a visitor encounters artists, a huge opera house, fabulous food, a red-light district and an open-air pet market. Does this sound like Prince George's County? (...)

Peterson built projects all over the region, but mostly in Northern Virginia. His office park, residential and mixed-use projects have been standard suburban fare -- office buildings off major highways, apartments, condos, townhouses, single-family homes and maybe a church or two. His big-box stores, gas stations and chain restaurants have come accompanied by the inevitable giant slap of a parking lot.

Peterson has built a lot of these cookie-cutter developments, and not much distinguishes one from another. That is until recently. Peterson's work in the revitalized area of downtown Silver Spring has residents and businesses speaking in glowing terms.(**) And his National Harbor model gives reassuring evidence that the prime riverfront property just might be in the right hands. The elaborate 8-by-10-foot model generates excitement.

But if National Harbor is to become a favored destination, like San Francisco's North Beach or Miami Beach's South Beach, it will have to generate a large base of loyal local regulars. It also will need out-of towners who are willing to make a special trip there. People make special trips because they enjoy the ambience and unique qualities of an area. Toward that end, National Harbor should forgo strip mall cuisine. If we are what we eat, National Harbor will be what it serves. Forget Starbucks and ESPN Zone, and think San Francisco's Cafe Trieste and our own Vienna Inn.

Neighborhood vitality and verve can be as long-lived as New York's Greenwich Village or as newly minted as Richmond's Carytown. These places flourish because their status as celebrated destinations helps recruit artisans, artists and small businesses. These in turn plant roots, take risks and build the kinds of enterprises that further enrich the physical setting. National Harbor can do no less. Chain stores won't fill its streets, but an outstanding assortment of accomplished small businesses might.
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** (Actually I think that the "revitalization" of Silver Spring is no different from traditional urban renewal. It's not pedestrian friendly, and small businesses are losing out, so much so that Montgomery County is suggesting that additional incentives be provided to small businesses to preserve them.)


Carytown photo by Steve Pinkus.

Like Ms. Dyson, I like Greenwich Village and Carytown in Richmond. In fact, Carytown is one of the more interesting commercial districts in the region--one that I've written about before. Yesterday's Richmond Times-Dispatch happened to have an interesting article on Carytown, entitled "Carytown: Where Change is Constant," about the ebb and flow of the retail businesses there.

And it included an incredibly important statistic--the average retail rent/square foot--In 1990, Carytown commercial rent was $10 a square foot. It's now about $18 to $20 a square foot.

National Harbor will be all new construction, meaning that prevailing rents will need to be a minimum of $60/sq. ft., and probably much higher (upwards of $120/sq. ft.). This makes it almost impossible to attract small businesses without serious subsidy.

One of the particularly grotesque aspects of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore is how, other than a couple local seafood restaurants like Phillips, it is now all chains--from ESPN Zone to California Pizza Kitchen. National chains, attracted by the large number of people-customers, have crowded out local businesses.

Sure the U.S.S. Constitution offers authenticity, but the Inner Harbor is for and about tourists, with little in the way of other authentic experiences.


Would that Inner Harbor really looked like this. Title: Inner Harbor Media: Oil on Canvas, 1998. Size: 25" x 30, not framed. By Sy Mohr.

The rent statistic is interesting in another way. Even in "marginal" commercial districts in DC, such as H Street or Brookland, the floor of asking prices for rent is probably greater than $20/sq. ft. And these are for commercial districts far less successful than Carytown. This is why we need to be much more purposive in developing and incubating independent businesses.

One of the four rostrums from Jane Jacob's Death and Life of Great American Cities is the need for "a large stock of old buildings." This isn't because she is a preservationist, but because old buildings have lower carrying costs, particularly debt service, and this allows for the incubation of new businesses--retail, office, and other (it's part of the Richard Florida equation supporting the development of creative businesses).

This gets back to the point I make over and over again--the rule of thumb from the Main Street Approach is that a retail business pays 4%-10% of its annual revenues in rent (restaurants can and do pay slightly more). Figure it out backwards from what businesses can reasonably generate in revenues... yet the asking price for commercial buildings, asking prices for rent, and often the property tax assessments are completely out of whack compared to the revenue stream that successful businesses are likely to be able to generate.

This is why salon shops are dominant in many of the neighborhood commercial district, because they have a customer base that returns again and again, and the average transaction is high (a woman can easily spend $50-$150 getting her hair done) in comparison to the average retail business.

I agree that many of the retail businesses in our commercial districts are marginal, but they need help both to improve to be able to sell more, and the commercial districts need to improve more as well, in order to be able to draw greater numbers of patrons.


The place next store is available for rent! 500 block of H Street. Photo by Michael Berman.

Las Ramblas is a real city built up over centuries. When you build a development all at once, you can't have the ebb and flow of innovation, because high rents are the one uniform condition of such development.

The Carytown Watermelon Festival is a big street festival involving many of the merchants on the street. It's scheduled for Sunday August 10th.

Speaking of rents, last Wednesday's New York Times had an article, "Columbus Ave. Distances Itself From Broadway," comparing Columbus Avenue to Broadway, and how "more personal unique" chains are locating on Columbus vs. the big chains (Barnes and Noble, etc.) on Broadway. The retail rents on Columbus Avenue average $180/sq. foot. That means that for a 2,000 sf. space, the store needs to generate at least $3.6 million in annual sales...

[Added 7/2008, also see the New York Times article, "Offering Big Spaces, Amsterdam Avenue Is Catching More Retailers."]

Siting, site planning, and connection: More thoughts about baseball

Yesterday's blog entry "A different take on DC's plan for an architectural icon baseball stadium," engendered a trenchant comment as well.

Brian comments on the article by Steve Malanga from City Journal and says--

The article seems to confuse stylistic expression in ballparks with siting of ballparks - there are also good urban modern stadiums and then there's the home of the Texas Rangers, aesthetically all that the article calls for but exhibiting the planning characteristics of a 60's facility.
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Brian is right.

Siting, site planning, and connecting to the urban fabric are all separate but inter-connected issues. This gets back to some of the points I've made in the blog, i.e., "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Transit" or "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Business as Usual," that it's a lot more than just focusing on any one of these issues. They have to be addressed simultaneously. If stadia were such great economic engines then places around RFK, the old Tiger Stadium, etc., would be vital, stable, thriving neighborhoods, and they are not.

I think the experience of the lamented Memorial Stadium, and Fenway Park in Boston, and Wrigleyville in Chicago demonstrate the importance of putting stadia in real places and connecting to real places. (I haven't actually been to the PacBell Stadium in San Francisco but people that I respect speak highly of it.) The reality is that the area around Camden Yards still needs a lot of work... But Wrigleyville and Fenway thrive, although they have to worry (and in some respects they have lost) about touristification and the re-direction of retail, restaurants, and services away from neighborhood-serving uses and towards the sports fans.

It's going to take a long time to "build" a "real community" in the vicinity of the forthcoming baseball stadium.

In another blog entry I proposed a trolley short line from the Navy Yard to Union Station, with a connection at Capitol South, to off-load people directly onto the red and blue-orange subway lines. Dan Tangherlini countered that DDOT is looking at a trolley along M Street SE-ending at the Navy Yard station, connecting to the proposed trolley line up 8th Street, to better connect visitors to DC retail and restaurants on Barracks Row. While I like my idea from an efficiency standpoint, I must say that from an economic development standpoint, Dan's right...

Photo by Mike Kepika of the San Francisco Chronicle. People leaving the streetcars to see a Giants game at PacBell Park.

For more thinking about connecting and layering attractions, read this article about Fred Kent and the Project for Public Places, which is reprinted from Governing Magazine.

Also see this entry, "The Future of Barracks Row?," in the June archives.

And this book review of It's Hardly Sportin': Stadiums, Neighborhoods, and the New Chicago by Costas Spirou and Larry Bennett

Not waiting around for someone to do it for you

Trinidad residents out last Saturday morning. Photo by Elise Bernard.

Frozen Tropics reports on the newly developing Trinidad Ivy City Community Garden Club (which is focusing on Trinidad at the outset). Last weekend, a group of neighbors got together to beautify part of Montello Avenue.

Congratulations!

When it comes down to it, self-help makes all the difference.

Beautiful(?) Decay

Beautiful Decay is a journal featuring graffiti and urban decline.

Once again, I missed a reader comment (have to send a message to blogger help...), in this case, in response to the Borfs being arrested (July 13th: "Borf(s) Nabbed")

Anonymous in Columbia Heights writes:

So has it only occurred to me to go to Great Falls and spray paint "Borf" all over the Tsombikos residence?
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No, but it would be awesome to trash his house and neighborhood, except for the fact that we would be breaking the law too.

Flickr photo by Indy Charlie.

There is the war between the proponents of the "Broken Window Theory" and those who lean towards "freedom of expression" and "art" even if it ends up being anti-community.

I still remember something I read in the 2000 A.D. comic book about 20 years ago about a tagging war between a disaffected adolescent and a robot. (2000 A.D. was the comic book that spawned the pre-Sylvester Stallone Judge Dredd.) Neither felt worth much and tagging was a way to develop some sense of identity. The youth was shocked that the robot had the same sense of anomie.

In the city, the Borf(s) are guaranteed that their work will be seen. And even appreciated. Yet one of the first things suburban kids in the same age demographic as the Borfs tend to comment on is the squalor of the city--from litter to graffiti. Do enough people pass by various places in Great Falls (etc.), or would they, driving by at 60 mph, even notice tagging?

Borf-in at Dupont Circle. Flickr photo by Catherine A.

Needless to say, this op-ed in the Washington Post, "We're All Borf In the End: Here's an Empty Image My Generation Can Relate To," and the Borf-in at Dupont Circle (as written up in DCist), do bug the s*** out of me, but a Post reader from (shockingly) Potomac, Maryland seems to have put it best (from the online transcript of an interview with the author of the Outlook piece):

Potomac, Md.: This is all about the biggest piece of juvenile crap to hit The Post since, well, last week.** No one in D.C. gives a darn about some idiot going around defacing and vandalizing public property. And someone who is an adult should know better to falsely glamorize some misguided, slightly psychotic and blatantly stupid vandal whose crap has cost hard-working, normal taxpayers thousands of dollars. It's all a steaming pile of crap. And your "article" is extremely juvenile and lacking in any sense of the real world. It's terrible, actually. Here's a suggestion: Forget stereotypes and generalizations about "twentysomethings"--because here's a wake-up call: I know dozens of professional, adult twentysomethings who thought your article was ridiculous and who think this graffiti vandal should be in jail. In jail. Suggestion number two: grow up. No. 3: You need to go out with a D.C. Public Works Department crew and work for eight hours in 90-plus-degree heat to erase the vandalism from public property caused by this idiot. Then you need to spend time with the businesses and government officials and taxpayers who hate this crap defacing public property. Why don't you do that instead of writing incredibly childish articles glamorizing a vandal? The juvenile nature of some adults these days is downright frightening.

For more photos of the Borf-in, click here , for more Flickr photos on Borf, click here, and here for other Flickr photos on graffiti.

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** I rank the Borf piece in Outlook up there with the whiny travel piece in the Sunday magazine about a year to 18 months ago about a trip to Charleston which was all about the whiny children, spending a few minutes in Charleston, and mostly enjoying the condominium miles from the city, and the hot tub on the premises. Or with the piece from many years ago about how hard it is to piss in the toilet when the electricity's out and you can't see. Sit!

Vandalism in the suburbs.