Commerz in the 'hood, part three

Today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a column about the success of town-based Main Street programs in Washington State including Port Townsend. (Note that next year's Main Street conference is in Seattle and I hope to attend, as well as to make side trips to Vancouver, BC and Walla Walla...)

Old downtowns look at Port Townsend, where the courthouse area is in the midst of a massive relandscaping, as a model of revitalization. The town is one of three in the state to win a Great American Main Street Award. Jeff Larsen, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The article, "Main Street makes a comeback," is well-worth reading. One of the problems most people have in urban Main Street programs is hubris. They don't think that they can learn anything from smaller town Main Street programs. Talk about biting your nose to spite your face. I learn from everyone. The fact is that the processes and structural conditions are similar. The process of disinvestment is the same everywhere, just the degree and specific conditions of the disinvestment process vary, etc. Going to other places and trying to figure things out provides one with new insights and ideas. (Although my friends tell me that I don't have to go to a conference just to go visit another city...)

The thing about the Main Street Approach is that it is a simple and at the same time intricate model for how to approach commercial district revitalization. It focuses on rebuilding the economic model for the commercial district as a whole, which is a lesson swiped from the shopping mall managers. It focuses on assets--human, organizational, and physical, in particular historic buildings. It links the social and human capital of residents to merchants and aims to create a place where 1 + 1 = much more than 2.

In DC, even though we have 10 Main Street programs, I think that only two programs have implemented the model the way it should be implemented. H Street isn't one of them.

To be fair, it's a difficult process and it takes a long time and it's facile to expect after 50 years of disinvestment in the center city for a virtually 100% volunteer program with a bit of city-provided money to show miraculous improvement in a couple years.

Not open for business on the left, next to Men's Fashion Center on the right, 900 block H Street, NE, Washington, DC. Photo from a9.

So here is one of my other responses to the neighborhood discussion of the Post article, "Whose H Street Is It, Anyway? A Dispute Over Restaurant Zoning Creates a Chasm Between Northeast Washington's Old and New Residents."

Tolu Tolu, a neighborhood resident, wrote:

As an unwanted Native African American who is a Native Washingtonian serving on the ABL Committee I have argued many of the points voiced in the Washington Post article to the other six members. Who I feel liked it a whole lot better before I came. I just wish the reporter had contacted me too.

Here's my response:

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that there is a deliberate effort to push out African-American businesses?

Ironically, I was one of the only people on H Street Main Street (when I was on it) actively working to attract Sisterspace Books to the corridor (although you can imagine property owners were leery about having them as a tenant, not because of the type of business but because of their poor relationship with their landlord).

At the same time the idea was to attract Niese's Boutique (Mt. Rainer), assist the development of an African art gallery (which will likely still open on the 1100 block), and the development of another boutique (which I do help with, and is now open in Brookland) working to create a cluster of businesses that could be further extended and could complement extant AFRICAN-AMERICAN owned businesses with a comparable quality position such as the Stellbleu Boutique and Salon.

Hip isn't just a matter of age. Stellableu Store Window and Virginia Gaddis, 1200 block of H Street NE, June 2005.

I used to think of H Street "blighted" by salons, but actually most salons have fervently loyal customers who "happen to be" women. Since women conduct 80% of retail transactions, this is actually a strong potential foundation to leverage the development of new retail businesses. Unfortunately, these customers have few other places to spend money on H Street. (The Reilly Law of Retail Gravitation is about agglomeration and reaching a critical mass of quality stores with a variety of merchandise.) So they don't.

Furthermore, since June 2002 I have been familiar with the Leimert Park Los Angeles effort, which was written up in the Post last month (Los Angeles's Black Pride: Taking In the Retro Vibe of Leimert Park).

Ronald Mulgrew scans the ethnic wares at Africa by Yard, a store in L.A.'s African American enclave Leimert Park. (By Jonathan Alcorn For The Washington Post). Click on the article for a larger image.

In my opinion stores like Men's Fashion Center and George's have great possibilities, and carryouts, convenience, and dollar stores do not. But this is about the value and quality of the offer, not about race, because after all, in business, at the end of the day, the only color that really matters is the green (and now the additional hues) of money being spent in your establishment.

To best get what you want on H Street, what I'd recommend is:

(1) identifying property owners who will work with you;
(2) to attact skilled business proprietors and/or under-skilled people with great ideas and a willingness to learn;
(3) to open stores that you've identified will be successful;
(4) through the production of a market study comparable to the kind outlined in the Main Street approach or by the Center for Community Development at the University of Wisconsin Extension, which is far more detailed than the traditional kind of market study produced for planning studies such as the H Street Strategic Development Plan;
(5) which informs your development and issuance of "Requests for Expressions of Interest" designed to attract particular kinds of businesses, coordinated by the commercial district revitalization program with the property owners;
(6) to select quality concept-businesses that you want opened in your commercial district;
(7) supported by the assistance of sound programs designed to support the development, improvement, and maintenance of independently-owned and operated businesses, modeled perhaps after the Historic Downtown LA Retail Initiative or the Second Street District retail initiative in Austin Texas.

Not mentioned in the original email but an additional excellent resource is the Downtown Business Recruitment Handbook by David Milder. So is the book by Ed Crow, about the revitalization and transformation of the Manayunk District in Philadelphia. It's hard-headed and direct--like me--Paths and Pitfalls: On the Way to a New Vibrancy in Older Retail Districts.

And one of the main products of a market analysis is a "positioning statement," that guides the development and focus of your commercial district, your identity. A market study precis that does a pretty good job of laying this out is from Normal, Illinois. (Few Main Street programs in DC have produced such a document.) But it doesn't seem to be on their website anymore. I'll see if I can track it down.

Bracketed on two sides by unopened stores, 800 block of H Street NE, Washington, DC. Photo from a9.

Index Keywords:urban-revitalization