We're S H O P P I N G. We're Shopping...*

Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News. The Green Oak Village Place lifestyle center is designed to be a trendy open-air, walker-friendly mall.

* Pet Shop Boys

A good example of newspapers cheering on the Growth Machine and consumption is this article from the Detroit News, about the opening of a new shopping center in Livingston County (west of Detroit, north of Ann Arbor), "Mall Gets a Thumb Up." Note the banners, the stylized pavements, the individuated storefronts, in the photo above.

Focus on the Main Street look. All the more reason for traditional commercial districts to not forget that in the end, authenticity is real and a strength.

It's funny, because in the Main Street world, it's frequently discussed that in the 1950s-1970s, traditional shopping districts tried to compete with malls by covering up their traditional architecture with aluminum panels and such, rather than focusing on what made shopping centers truly unique--unified management, a common image, standard hours, and joint marketing.

Many of the things cities do today aren't much different than putting aluminum panels up on buildings. Better to focus on extending authenticity and strengthening the habitat that supports local business.

I haven't gotten around to writing about Stacy Mitchell's talk from earlier in the week, but one interesting fact. A few years ago she did a study of stores in Maine (where she lives) and found that of $1 spent in a locally-owned store, 54 cents remained in the local economy, being spent on other things (advertising, wages, goods to sell, etc.) while with chain stores, only 14 cents of each $1 remained in the local economy. Do incentives for chain stores make sense then?

Similarly, authoritative studies show that there is a net loss of 180 retail and service jobs for every new Wal Mart that opens. Hmm, doesn't seem to be too good of a return in terms of looking at "Building a Local Economy," a missing element from the process of creating Comprehensive Plans for localities.

Interestingly enough, an article in the Sacramento Business Journal discusses the Blue Oaks Town Center in Rocklin and parking, making the point that 75% of the total acreage of the shopping center is devoted to parking--that's 41 acres of 55 total (the project is about 2.4 million square feet).
Photo: Dennis McCoy, Sacramento Business Journal.

According to the article, "Parking isn't made in the shade: Rules dictate landscaping, pedestrian-friendliness, number, size of spaces:"

"In most cases, the design of the parking lot is driven by three factors: the size of the parcel, the shape and the type of retail product you're trying to create," he added.

Typically, the number of spaces required varies by use, said David Sablan, assistant planner with the city of Rocklin. In that city, for example, the zoning code requires developers provide one parking space for every 200 square feet of retail, and one space for every three fixed seats in a restaurant. The size of the standard space -- unchanged for years, even as the popularity of SUVs has soared -- is 9 feet by 19 feet, and for a compact space is 8 feet by 16 feet. "No more than 30 percent of the spaces may be compact spaces," said Sablan, "and everybody has to have 25 feet of back-up space."

Design seems to be more about cars, and less about people. Although, it's also about making money and providing places that people want, see "Architects strip away old view of neighborhood shopping center: Cities now demand designs that look like Main Street or European villages," also from the Sacramento Business Journal.

Still, I find it incredibly frustrating that the most adept usually suburban developers understand the appeal of traditional commercial districts, which typifies center cities. Meanwhile center city policies and the attitudes of elected and appointed government officials is that new allegedly glitzy architecture is the ticket, in the face of clear market signals communicating something very different.

Index Keywords: retail