Making "Downtown Silver Spring" a true open air shopping district by adding department stores

On this map of the Silver Spring core:

Hatched Red = retail district
Solid Red = retail district with potential for intensification (redevelopment of parking lot)
Blue = Discovery site
Black = Metrorail
Yellow = pedestrian path current and potential for extension (darker yellow)
Green = future light rail


I am still way behind in writing based on my trip to Liverpool and London.  Overlaid with trips to Essen and Hamburg, one of the things that I intend to write about is pedestrianizing more places in cities, but not so much in terms of creating big districts, but starting "small," with the creation of small one or two block pedestrianized areas where we know they can be successful.

I wrote about big open air shopping districts as pedestrianized city centers, focusing on Liverpool and Essen, and specifically using the Liverpool One shopping center, but applying the concept to North Miami-Dade County, "Learning from Essen and Liverpool and applying it to Miami: Shopping "malls" in the city center."

Liverpool One is an open air shopping district anchored with public spaces and two department stores, John Lewis and Debenhams.  In the US, we'd call this a lifestyle center, although most lifestyle centers in the US don't have department stores ("What exactly is a lifestyle center and is it just a dressed up shopping mall," City Metric).

Different from lifestyle centers in the US, Liverpool One deliberately abuts and connects and extends Liverpool's pedestrianized city center, and contributing more broadly by making a pedestrian connection between it and the city's waterfront, making the core city pedestrian district even larger.

Typically US lifestyle centers, even in urban locations, are more disconnected from the rest of the city ("Lifestyle centers vs. traditional commercial districts," 2006).

Liverpool pedestrian shopping district

As opposed to the enclosed shopping mall which for a long time dominated the retail landscape, there are some still extant open air shopping districts in the US, but not very many compared to malls.

I am sure there are many examples of which I am unaware.  By this, I mean where there are still department stores as anchors.  One is the Bal Harbour Shops in South Florida.

Another, and I can't believe I didn't mention it, is the Friendship Heights shopping district in Chevy Chase DC and Maryland.  And the Union Square district in San Francisco, which has six department stores within a three block radius, four on the street and two in an interior mall.

Bloomingdales in Union Square, San Francisco

Bal Harbour is set up for walking once you get there, while Friendship Heights has a Metrorail station and other transit service, sidewalks and four department stores--Lord and Taylor off by itself, behind the Mazza Gallerie, which has a Neiman-Marcus, and Bloomingdales and Saks have standalone stores on Wisconsin Avenue on the Maryland side--but it's still a district dominated by the car and it's very disjoint because its mostly a creation of private property owners with limited planning coordination with and between the local governments, necessary because it is a cross-border district.

(Unlike Bethesda Row or Downtown Silver Spring, it's clearly an area that hasn't been working on enhancing its open-air nature in a concerted way.)

Fifth Avenue in New York City and the Magnificent Mile in Chicago are examples of shopping streets.  State Street in Chicago too was once a great example until recently--now all the big department stores are gone.  (Of course, most cities had such streets at one time.  In Detroit it was Woodward Avenue, in DC it was 7th Street NW, in Baltimore, Lexington Street, etc.).

State Street, Chicago, c. 1960s

Some smaller "market towns" have or had standalone department stores as anchors to their commercial districts.  Typically these were independent stores, such as Jacobson's in Ann Arbor, Crowleys and Jacobsons in Birmingham, and Crowleys in Grosse Pointe, all in Michigan, or how a Macy's still anchors Downtown Walla Walla, Washington.

The regional department store chain Boscov's, based in Reading, Pennsylvania, has two traditional downtown stores in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and Binghamton, New York.

Macy's Walla Walla

Michigan market towns lost out big time when the state's two independent companies went out of business in the 2000s, because there are fewer department store companies to begin with, and because these firms typically favor mall locations.

All of these forms are "unenclosed" compared to the typical shopping mall experience.

In an attempt to compete with the suburbs, some cities built interior-focused urban shopping malls during the urban renewal era.  Examples include the Mall at Steamtown in Scranton, Pennsylvania anchored by Boscov's, Newport Center, in Norfolk, Virginia anchored by Dillards, and the Shops of Grand Avenue in Milwaukee, anchored by the now closing Boston Store, a division of Bon-Ton.

The failure of the Bon-Ton Department Store chain will cause many malls and some city centers, like Milwaukee, to lose key anchors.  Although some of the locations--a handful--that remained successful despite corporate troubles are likely to be picked up by companies like Von Maur or Dillards.  The Charlotte-based company Belk is taking over a Bon-Ton location in a mall in Hagerstown, Maryland, etc.

Silver Spring's opportunity to counter-program its commercial district as outdoor focused.  Montgomery Maryland which borders DC, is one of the nation's wealthiest counties.  Like other wealthy suburban areas, it has a bunch of shopping malls, but as a set of inner suburbs, the success of the county's shopping centers varies, and some malls and shopping centers are being redeveloped, others sputter, and some are wildly successful.

The county has invested a lot of money in Silver Spring's revitalization, in the face of economic decline typical to what are referred to as inner ring suburbs.  In Bethesda, "Bethesda Row" is a national best practice example of new "urban" shopping streets, and a similar kind of redevelopment is happening with Rockville Town Center and in the White Flint/North Bethesda district.

Ellsworth Avenue, Silver Spring

Montgomery Mall is one of the nation's more successful upscale malls, while Wheaton Plaza remains successful, but with more of a middle-market orientation.  White Flint Mall no longer exists, except for the lone Lord and Taylor store, while Lake Forest Mall in Gaithersburg continues to languish.

In the days of market towns, Silver Spring was the location of the DC-based Hecht's first suburban store, along with a branch of JCPenney.

-- Richard Longstreth, “Silver Spring: Georgia Avenue, Colesville Road and the Creation of an Alternative `Downtown’ for Metropolitan Washington,” Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994

These stores closed in the 1980s losing out to the more dominant shopping mall.  Over time the shopping district has been revitalized but with smaller stores like H&M, Burlington Coat Factory, Ulta, and Michaels, complemented by restaurants, and civic and cultural uses.

Even so, Silver Spring still must compete with Wheaton Plaza, which is less than four miles away, and is anchored by Macys, Sears, JCPenney, Target, and Costco.

Arguably, "Downtown Silver Spring" has become the region's most successful night-time destination, with its walkable nature anchored by a short pedestrianized street, Ellsworth Avenue, and a large civic plaza at this street's intersection with Fenton Street. The area is home to farmers markets, festivals, and other activity, including a large cineplex, an art theater, and a concert facility.

This area is two blocks from the Silver Spring Transit Center and Metrorail Station, and in between the two districts like a fortress is the Discovery Channel headquarters building.  But after a merger, the company is leaving the area.

In my series of articles on how to make over Silver Spring as an "innovation district" by leveraging the coming addition of light rail to the area's transit mix, there are many recommendations for how to strengthen the area's placemaking qualities.

-- PL #5: Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District"
-- Part 1: Setting the stage
-- Part 2: Program items 1- 9
-- Part 3: Program items 10-18
-- Part 4: Conclusion
-- Map for the Silver Spring Sustainable Mobility District
-- (Big Hairy) Projects Action Plan(s) as an element of Comprehensive/Master Plans [now I all these "transformational projects action plans"]
-- Creating the Silver Spring/Montgomery County Arena and Recreation Center

One recommendation was the creation of a more focused retail recruitment plan, making the point that the County shouldn't rely completely on the private sector for this kind of work, because there can be a mismatch of priorities.

There needs to be a "second phase" to retail planning there, to keep Silver Spring's retail district successful and relevant in the face of greater competition elsewhere in the county and the metropolitan area.

Given my experiences in Liverpool, Essen, and Hamburg, and the already open-air orientation of the Silver Spring shopping district, albeit it's anchored also by the Ellsworth Place interior focused mall (refashioned from the old Hecht's store, while the old JCPenney's is now the Fillmore Concert Hall), it occurs to me that Silver Spring needs to go "long" and continue to plan for the intensification of the retail offer of the district.

But by further emphasizing, strengthening and extending its outdoor nature.

Retail sector is bifurcated and some companies remain successful.  In the face of e-commerce, competition, and financial engineering, the retail industry is going through significant consolidation, with many firms going out of business.

That being said, even though as a sector department stores are having problems too, some department store companies continue to succeed. Even as many stores close, new stores do open here and there, depending on local economic circumstances.

Capturing the Discovery Channel building as a way to extend the retail district and connect it to the Metrorail site.  The Discovery Channel is vacating a very large building that is sited between the Metrorail station and the commercial center.

The building is very much interior focused and doesn't contribute positively to activation and the placemaking qualities of the streets surrounding it, although there are some public garden and plaza spaces on the Wayne Avenue side of the site, which can be opened up and better integrated into the streetscape.

The coming redevelopment of that block offers a great opportunity to strengthen and extend the retail district and connect it more directly to the transit station.  Transit stations are the hubs of successful retail districts all over the world.

Foulger-Pratt, developer of Downtown Silver Spring along with Peterson Companies, is buying the Discovery Building ("Discovery building gets new buyer," LocalDVM).

Why not redevelop that site to be way more open and connected to the street instead of closed off from it, to connect the Metrorail Station to Downtown Silver Spring, by extending it, by adding a retail to the ground plane of the block bounded by Wayne Avenue, Colesville Road, and Georgia Avenue, which is currently occupied exclusively by the Discovery Channel?

One way to do this is through the addition of a department store, further strengthening Downtown Silver Spring as a regional shopping destination.

It's counter intuitive, given that in general the department store sector is shrinking, but there are still successful firms operating in this market segment.

Options for a department store.  I see four possible options.  First we must dispose of the unlikely options. Silver Spring isn't upscale enough for Nordstroms, which already has a location at Montgomery Mall. Similarly, Bloomingdales has a store in Chevy Chase, and Lord & Taylor seems committed to their stand-alone location in White Flint, and their Friendship Heights location is too close to justify a close by store in Silver Spring.

Macys has stores at all the major malls and with some exceptions of large legacy stores in big cities like DC, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, they are a suburban mall oriented company.

Boscov's.  The company that comes to mind foremost is Boscov's, based in Reading, Pennsylvania.  First, they have three urban stores in their portfolio, which is atypical. Second, they have stores elsewhere in Maryland including as close as Frederick, less than 40 miles from Downtown Silver Spring.  The firm is still family owned, and expanding at the rate of about one new store each year.

Boscov's, Binghamton, NY.

I actually reached out to their director of real estate development about this idea. He made the point that Boscov's is merchant driven and community focused, and that if they can make the right community connections to make a store successful, they will consider it.

Yes, their stores are mostly in malls, but urban locations will still be evaluated when conditions are favorable.  Store managers have a fair amount of flexibility to develop a program of store-specific promotional activities.

In terms of tax incentives, he said that deals are a transaction between a developer and the company, and the local government isn't involved directly, although they may provide incentives to the developer to facilitate the entry of a department store.

Primark.  Is a firm based in Europe. Given that reality, a preponderance of their stores are in urban districts.  That's the case in cities like Liverpool, Hamburg, and Essen.  They are expanding to the US, albeit they are moving slowly and mostly with stores in malls.  Their store in Downtown Boston is in Downtown Crossing, another example of an open air shopping district.

Primark's store in Downtown Boston

Primark store on Gran Via in Madrid

So far, Primark has limited their expansion to the Boston and New York areas, but given the firm's DNA is based on city center locations, it'd be worth approaching them.

Dillards.  The firm continues to expand, often by taking over other companies or locations that have been abandoned.  Their closest stores are in Richmond.  The DC area is demographically attractive.

The firm doesn't seem to have much interest in urban locations, although they did open a store in the mid-2000s in Atlanta's Atlantic Station urban redevelopment. Abutting Midtown, it's the redevelopment of a former steel mill site, and while the building was new construction, it "feels" older.

Belk.  Belk used to be family owned but is now owned by private equity interests.  They serve the South and are based in North Carolina and serve the South.  They do have stores in the outskirts of the Washington region in Fredericksburg and St. Mary's County in Maryland.  They have many other stores in Virginia, and they are taking over a Bon-Ton location in a shopping mall Hagerstown, Maryland.

But they seem to have little interest in urban locations, and taking on the DC market might be a stretch.

Recommendations

1.  Make as planning priority strengthening and extending the character of the Silver Spring core as an outdoor-focused retail and entertainment district.

2.  Approach Foulger-Pratt about bringing retail to the lower floors of the Discovery Channel building.

3.  Develop a phase two planning program for strengthening the Silver Spring retail district.  A key element is  extending the pedestrian-centric path of Ellsworth Avenue currently from Fenton Street to Georgia Avenue from Georgia Avenue to the Metrorail Station.

4.  Develop a retail recruitment plan, including the possibility of adding one or more department stores, as part of the redevelopment program for the Discovery site.

5.  But regardless, create and implement a broader retail plan for the broader district to seize on other opportunities and to fill evident holes in the current retail mix (more apparel, books, since Borders left, etc.)

6. Approach Boscovs and Primark.  Be prepared to offer incentives. Sound out Dillards and Belk.

7. Ideally get both Boscovs and Primark, put one in the Discovery Building, and the other somewhere around Fenton and Ellsworth, east of Fenton, to further extend and strengthen the district (I would do this by intensifying the site shown in the map in dark red, currently the location to Strosniders Hardware, CVS, and Whole Foods).

8.  Although make recruiting departments stores a two-phase plan too.  Focus on redeveloping the Discovery Channel block to connect the Metrorail station to the Downtown Silver Spring District, making it seamless.  Being successful with one department store and enlivening the currently dead space between the Metrorail Station and Ellsworth Avenue, makes it more possible to land a second store, after determining there is enough market demand to support both.

Brief follow up on DC and a new football stadium for the Redskins

-- "Been to Largo lately? Sports teams often aren't very good partners..."

Yesterday's Post sports section also has an article on this, "'Bring it home': Bowser, Snyder speak glowingly of RFK site for next Redskins stadium."

So it's worth extracting from the 2014 entry, "An arena subsidy project I'd probably favor," the list of criteria I came up with concerning how to best leverage the presence of a sports stadium or arena.  Recognizing too that generally there are limited improvements to neighborhoods ("Residents hope Mercedes-Benz Stadium aids nearby Atlanta neighborhood," Atlanta Journal-Constitution) as opposed to commercial districts.

I came up with the list because taking the position of "no stadium" or "no public funding" rarely is successful. Knowing a project will be approved, the best thing to do is to focus on extracting the best possible deal and urban design, to stake out a position aiming to get the most possible value from the stadium/arena because it's practically a certainty that government will agree to money, land, tax breaks, etc.

This list is focused on the retail/commercial district side.  And it favors sports other than football based on frequency of events and the cost of the facility

Characteristics that support successful ancillary development and local benefits from professional sports facilities

In the attempt to create a more comprehensive list, new items are denoted by bold type.

• isolation or connection: how well is the facility integrated into the urban fabric beyond the stadium site and does it leverage, build upon, and extend the location and the community around it; (e.g., the difference in Chicago between Wrigleyville and the Chicago Cubs stadium and the disconnected from the community stadium for the Chicago White Sox);
• size of the facility (baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer), bigger stadiums--football stadiums specifically--are harder to integrate in the urban fabric;
• cost of the facility [new]
• lease terms, opportunities for public entities to earn real revenues from the project and benefit from team appreciation upon sale; [new]  See "Even When Teams Pay, Stadiums Still Aren't Free for Cities," Governing Magazine, and media coverage of court proceedings concerning the sale of the Miami Marlins baseball team ("Protecting local government interests: Jurisdictions at risk from slimy sports teams owners and the Miami Marlins as an example");
• frequency of events held by the primary tenant--baseball has 82 home games/year, football about 10 including pre-season, basketball and hockey have 41, soccer about 17--so football stadiums are very rarely used (according to the Chicago Sun-Times article "Emanuel mulling 5,000-seat expansion to Soldier Field," the facility holds about 22 events including annually, 12 non-football events);
• how many teams use the facility, maximizing use and utility of the building--for example, Verizon Center in DC is used by professional men's and women's basketball, hockey, and one college basketball team for more than 100 sports events each year;
• are events scheduled in a manner that facilitates attendee patronage of off-site businesses--a business isn't an anchor if it aims to not share its customers; the earlier events are scheduled, the harder it is to patronize retailers and restaurants located off-site, at night during the week, there is limited post-game spending as well, on the weekends it's a different story with more opportunity to patronize off-site establishments--teams manipulate scheduling to reduce spending outside of their on-site and 100% controlled facilities;
• retail mix within the facility, support of social enterprise development [new]--see the discussion here, "Building a local economy vs. "economic development" in planning: Wizards practice facility." One concession, West Nest, at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium of the Atlanta Falcons, is run by the culinary training program of the neighborhood nonprofit, Westside Works ("In The New Atlanta Falcons Stadium, One Restaurant Has A Mission," Fast Company), note that these days sports facilities are much more focused on providing better food, some are lowering prices in the face of sales declines, and most are seeking out and bringing into the facility local firms with authenticity and identity;
• use of the facility for non-game events drawing additional patrons--such as concerts and other types of programming;
• how people travel to events: automobiles vs. transit--if automobiles are the primary way people get to events, then large amounts of parking usually in surface lots needs to be provided, making it difficult to foster ancillary development because of lack of land and poor quality of the visual environment, whereas if transit is the primary mode, then more land around a facility can be developed in ways that leverage the proximity of the arena;
• requirements for transportation demand management and support of transit [new]--this needs to be specified because too often, even in places with frequent transit, localities fail to include requirements on sports teams to support/finance transit access when warranted;
• ticket/parking tax/fee to fund community benefits [new]--one way to fund ancillary programs more directly is through a dedicated ticket or parking tax. See "Hill District seeks more arena-area parking money for development" and "SEA urged to use a portion of parking revenue to support Hill," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

Night baseball and the impact on Chicago's Wrigleyville 
commercial district.  The comment thread on the previous entry reminded me I forgot to mention the journal article, "Revamped Stadium...New neighborhood," Spirou, Costas & Larry Bennett. Urban Affairs Review. v37:5, May 2002, 675-702. It was part of the writing that ultimately was published in the book It's Hardly Sportin': Stadiums, Neighborhoods, and the New Chicago.

(There's a list of related literature in this student research proposal.  A citation listing of the piece by Chema appears to generate a good listing too.)

It's a great discussion of the changes to Chicago's Wrigleyville as a commercial district, with the addition of night time lighting and a regular schedule of night games to Wrigley Field.

The commercial district shifted from a more balanced retail mix to a focus on nightlife establishments (although the organization of the retail industry was also changing at this time, which contributed, as did the local effects of deindustrialization and the outmigration of industry from the city).

The district continues to evolve. Chicago Tribune wrote about this recently, "Welcome to the boring, tedious confines of the new Wrigleyville," arguing that the changes that have come with in-migration of wealth to the city and development to the district specifically have made it antiseptic and somewhat homogeneous. From the article:

The new Wrigleyville is an assemblage of hard edges and smooth surfaces, offices, condos and storefronts, ice cream shops and sports bars and thoughtful hotels, arranged into gray and beige blocks, impersonal and dull alongside the remaining rowhouses. It’s a lot of “new spaces.” Sound like anywhere you know? Or everywhere you know? The elegant ancientness of Wrigley Field, once bracing as you approached it, now looks buried and cramped. And a 10 screen movie theater and Lucky Strike bowling alley are still coming. Nice if you live nearby; the goal is keeping visitors close year round, especially out-of-town executives eager to pass on the usual Michigan Avenue haunts for “real Chicago.” But the trade-off is a neighborhood where all the restaurants are “concepts” and all the culture is “content.”

Am I being naive?

Probably. I know profit is the driver, and that maximizing profit creates its own justification these days. I know I am arguing for a sleazier Wrigleyville. I know this battle is already lost. But where is the outcry? Not long ago Chicago got worked up when a glass UFO was plopped on top of Soldier Field. And now I hear just everything changes, as if progress inevitably means becoming Stepfordville USA.

This is likely the case of most of the "retail" that develops because of stadiums and arenas.  It's more food and drink than retail, outside of a store or two that sells team merchandise ("Cubs' flagship Wrigleyville store might be a destination on its own," CT).

Community benefits framework needs to be added.  Another element that I didn't include in my listing is what we would call "community benefits."  I'm not sure what to include.  I do like how the basketball arena in Bilbao, Spain also includes a community recreation center, which extends to access to the court when not in use by the sports teams using the facility.

Above I've added items concerning social enterprises as part of the retail mix and a ticket tax to fund improvements in the immediately impacted area of the facility.

Another item would be access to the facility generally, and for community/nonprofit type events. For arenas, if in mixed use areas, including public recreation centers would be a plus.

The Washington Nationals baseball team provides some financial support to youth baseball. For example, this year they paid for the rehabilitation of a baseball diamond and stands at the Takoma Recreation Center ("Nationals to dedicate Bryce Harper Field, MLB). The Washington Redskins paid for the construction (but not the operation) of a community center near their facility in Maryland.

Improvements in 311 response: still has a ways to go

Years ago I "complained" in a blog entry that the way the city reported on citizen service "requests" through the 311 system was inadequate, because the report merely said the item was "closed" with no information on disposition.

With two requests over the last couple months I see one big improvement, but problems still exist.

Not only has the notice been reformatted to be more like a letter, they have added a new field "Case Closure Comment."

In May I reported an abandoned likely stolen vehicle on the next block.  The car was moved, but the service request "case comment" was gobbledygook.  Likely what it is saying is that someone else reported this as well, and they already or were in the process of responding.

They should say that. Still, compared to having no comment line reporting on what happened, this is a step forward.

Just yesterday, I reported a dead animal in the street.  The response "comment" was more direct, that the "item," in this case a possum, was picked up.  That's direct and easy to understand.  (Sadly, it's so direct because likely I'm the only person who reported it, and it wasn't even in front of my house.)

Interestingly at first the city employee couldn't find the possum and called us, since I included my phone number on the request.  I went out there, showed him where it had been--you could still see the mark on the street and tufts of animal hair--and then he noticed that it was moved off the street, likely by another animal who fed off it.

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Last year, I was somewhat dismissive about the city's touting its use of a grant to fund a center on innovation in public services on "form redesign."

-- "Five new forms: is that all you've got?"

But it is important.

But I am not so content to take pride in helping to foment such change, when it isn't second order change (Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Formation).

Been to Largo lately? Sports teams often aren't very good partners...

... the area around the FedEx Stadium in Prince George's County isn't particularly nice.  The Boulevard at Cap Centre shopping center, built on the grounds of the old US Air sports arena is a disaster.  But to be fair, because football stadiums are used so infrequently, most areas around football stadiums aren't particularly lively.  WRT to PG County, they only make some money off the events, and that comes because of an entertainment tax on the tickets.

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In public private partnerships, local governments tend to be the junior partner.  One thing that bothers me about relationships between public and private entities, usually called "public-private partnerships," is that if partnerships are defined as relationships between equals, they are not.

In most cases, what is called a partnership is really contractual, not capable of flexible modification as circumstances warrant, and most importantly, tends to be quite one-sided in favor of the for profit business.

This is the case with contracts between public entities and sports teams.  There are few examples of such relationships being somewhat equal, where the local government as major funder of stadiums and other stuff (training facilities, etc.) get a decent economic return.  Mostly they lose out.

Sports infrastructure is costly no matter who pays for it.  And NotionsCapital points us to this Governing Magazine article, "Even When Teams Pay, Stadiums Still Aren't Free for Cities," which discusses machinations by the Columbus soccer team which aims to move to Austin. From the article:

While many cities are no longer willing to foot the bill for sports stadiums, they are still facing other costs or lost revenue when teams come to town.

These can take several forms: forgone property tax revenue if cities offer an exemption, missed ticket and parking tax revenue if teams are allowed to keep it for themselves, or passed on stadium maintenance and improvement costs.

Who's responsible for maintenance and improvements can be a particular flashpoint as crumbling stadiums are often used as a reason by teams to relocate. That's what happened when Stan Kroenke moved the NFL's St. Louis Rams to Los Angeles in 2016 and what precipitated the sale of the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics and eventual move to Oklahoma City in 2008.

The article goes on to discuss the proposed deal in Austin, Texas and points out that while the team would pay for the stadium, it would come at great cost to the city:

While the city's mayor touts the move as having no cost to taxpayers, that's a superficial way of looking at it, says Nathan Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has been critical of the deal. The city isn't paying upfront money, but Jensen notes that it's giving up substantial tax revenue. First, the team is gifting the stadium to the city, which makes the whole site exempt from property taxes. Second, the team gets to keep any revenue related to the stadium, such as ticket and parking taxes, naming rights and sponsorship deals.

That lost revenue adds up. According to research by University of Michigan professor Judith Grant Long, lost property tax revenue on a $350 million stadium can total $67 million over 30 years. The average city's share of revenue from ticket surcharges, concessions and parking surcharges (often split with a team) can add to at least another $53 million in lost money over 30 years. Naming rights and advertising revenue are also lucrative revenue streams -- although most cities, even when they own the stadium, don't see this money.

Teams play jurisdictions off each other to get the best deal.  Although the team owners often continue to play jurisdictions against each other, even threaten to leave for another community, in planning to maximize the incentives received for the replacement of the current facility, figuring it will age out soon enough.

Choose your partners carefully.  Also, I have been thinking about this in terms of the longevity of the contracts. These are agreements that last decades. When you're giving a stadium or arena to a firm, shouldn't you want that firm to be somewhat open and flexible and reasonable and a good manager and operator of the team?

Why should you give land and lots of money to a team where the owner is a jerk and runs the franchise very poorly?  ("Advocacy group creates 'The Danifesto' to protect Redskins fans from Dan Snyder," Washington Post).

Or turns around and says they shouldn't have to pay the equivalent of taxes on the free land they got ("Carolina Panthers, Charlotte Knights could get big tax breaks on land around stadiums," Charlotte Observer).

Why "choose" as your "partner" someone bad? (Note I also made this point wrt the GSA and the Old Post Office Building, where they picked the Trump Organization to operate it. Besides immediately asking for tax breaks when the RFP said such wouldn't be provided, they are a firm known for challenging tax assessments, not paying bills, etc.)



Football stadiums have limited economic return for the local community.  Besides the fact that football stadiums don't appear to offer much in the way of economic benefit, unlike baseball stadiums or basketball/hockey arenas which have many more events ("An arena subsidy project I'd probably favor: Sacramento," 2014), why choose to "partner up" with someone bad?

That to me is the crux of the issue with the Washington Redskins football team or with any team owned by Jeffrey Loria ("Protecting local government interests: Jurisdictions at risk from slimy sports teams owners and the Miami Marlins as an example").

Just Go Away/Let it Go.  DC should be happy to let the Redskins move from Maryland to Virginia ("McAuliffe: Virginia in 'very serious negotiations' with Redskins for new stadium," Richmond Times-Dispatch

Although the Redskins seem to want to be in the city ("The Redskins reportedly ‘want a downtown experience’ surrounding their new stadium," Washington Post). But that could be the team trying to play DC off Virginia for a better deal.

A downtown experience 12 times/year isn't much return for the city. Especially when football is still dominated by tailgate culture, which requires parking lots.

Although in Los Angeles, partly because of lack of parking space, a goodly number of people have traveled to Rams games via transit. according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune ("Why weekend ridership is up on Gold, Expo line trains"), 25% or more trips to Rams football games are on transit. They say it's because of the high cost of parking.  From the article:

Why do these lines show bigger increases on weekends than weekdays? Riders tell Metro they like saving money on parking.

Parking at the Sept. 18 Los Angeles Rams game at the Los Angeles Coliseum was as high as $200, according to some bloggers and fans. The Expo Line — with stops at USC and Exposition Park — carried 21,000 of the 80,000 who jammed the Coliseum for the Ram’s first win, Metro reported.

“I know some friends from West Los Angeles who are music aficionados and go to the Music Center downtown but hate to pay $35 to park your car,” said Bart Reed, executive director of The Transit Coalition, a nonprofit, pro-mass transit group based in the San Fernando Valley.

While exiting the symphony for the nearest train station may be a breeze, hopping an Expo train with 20,000 riders exiting the Coliseum meant long lines and required plenty of patience. It took about 90 minutes to clear the last passenger, and that was with three-car trains every six minutes, Hillmer said.

We'd save a lot of money and get to use whatever land would be used for the stadium for other, more profitable purposes.

Football practice facilities seem to be a losing proposition.  Back when Councilman Jack Evans and others wanted to land the Redskins practice facility I was not in favor ("Unstrategy for economic development in DC," 2011).

It hasn't worked out for Richmond ("Impact of Redskins camp surpasses city’s estimates," Richmond Times-Dispatch). While the economic study touted by the city claims an economic impact for the region, not just the city, of over $10 million, after deducting tax revenues earned from the annual payment the city makes to the Redskins, they lose money.

We dodged that bullet.

DC's Mayor wants the Redskins to return to DC.  Despite Mayor Bowser's clamoring for DC to be picked ("Mayor Muriel Bowser Wants NFL Team Back in D.C.," Washington City Paper), hopefully DC will dodge the bullet of a new stadium for the Washington Redskins.

Irrespective of the name ("Roger Goodell doesn't see Redskins name change," NFL), recently the Redskins have realized that their reputation on the business side required a reboot, especially as attendance has dropped precipitously ("The Sad History Of The Skins' Bogus Season Ticket Waiting List," Deadspin; "They've had Redskins tickets for more than 50 years. They've finally had enough," Post), so they hired a new VP of business operations ("Redskins hire Brian Lafemina from NFL to lead business side," Post) with a lot of experience in not being a jerk.

Lately I can't get the song "Just Go Away," by Blondie out of my head, thinking about both Roseanne Barr and Donald Trump. I feel the same about a football stadium in DC. ... and also the "Let it Go" song from the Disney movie "Frozen" although when I "sing it" in my head, I say "... 'et it go" because that's how the then 2-year old next door used to sing it.



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P.S. when you do write the contract, don't forget to put in provisions requiring transportation demand management and specific contracts with the local transit agencies for service when games run late.  DC failed on that with the Washington Nationals baseball team.

Revisiting stories: Tax breaks for Disneyland to end in Anaheim

In November 2017, we wrote about strife between the City of Anaheim and the Disney Corporation over tax breaks ("The Mouse that Roars: Disney's complicated arrangement with the City of Anaheim"). 

The 2016 election resulted in a shift on the City Council, from a pro-Disney majority to a majority that was more questioning of the tax breaks, which "cost" the city many millions of dollars of tax revenue each year, even as the city benefits considerably from taxes and revenues related to Disneyland.

-- "Outside Disneyland, a Reminder for Governments to Be Careful What They Wish for," Governing Magazine

My favorite is an old agreement for a parking structure. It cost $100+ million to build and Disney makes about $35 million/year from it, while paying $1 per year in rent.

About 45% of the city budget is derived from Disney-related revenues, about 20% of the city's employment base is made up of people employed by Disney, and significant segments of the local economy also benefit.

But in the face of a November referendum put on the ballot by labor interests ("Disneyland $18 Minimum Wage Qualifies for Anaheim Ballot," Variety), calling for high minimum wages for hospitality-related businesses benefiting from city tax breaks, Disney asked the city to cancel the tax breaks, thereby making the results of the forthcoming election moot ("Anaheim officially puts an end to tax breaks for Disneyland Resort," Los Angeles Times).

From the standpoint of generalizable lessons, I don't know exactly what to make of this.

First, I believe that strictures on collecting entertainment taxes are bad policy. The point of such taxes is to more directly benefit from the presence of such facilities. It's also a way to pay for the tax breaks that might be provided.

Second, I think it's reasonable to tie wage requirements to tax breaks, as an element of public policy.

Third, it shows that there are pressure points with corporations.

Fourth, but this is an exceptional case. Unlike a sports team that can move, e.g., the Rams football team from St. Louis to Los Angeles, or the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas or the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City, Disneyland can't up and move. It's a fixed asset.

It might reduce its rate of growth, but it will continue to be vital and successful.

It will be interesting to see the long term changes that result and any changes to the City of Anaheim's revenue base.

The company claims that it will look elsewhere for projects ("Disney, Wincome Group Could Abandon Future Projects In Anaheim If Minimum Wage Measure Passes," Bisnow) and it does have options to do so, in abutting communities that are close enough for projects to be integrated in the Disneyland ecosystem.

But in the short run, they've staved off the possibility of being forced to pay higher wages as a result of linkages with tax breaks.

Dedicated transitways in DC and San Francisco

Red-painted dedicated bus lane on Georgia Avenue.

While I think that we need a dedicated network of transitways and other bus prioritization measures to make bus-based surface transit more effective, one of the problems of having such lanes is that because in most places bus service isn't that frequent, the lanes are empty much of the time.

The key is to put them in the places where they are most needed and build outward.  For example, in DC, H Street in Downtown would be the #1 place, because a number of bus lines, not just the high frequency X2 bus, use that stretch.

Or 16th Street (16th Street NW Transit Priority Planning Study, DC Department of Transportation).

This is proving to be the case of the temporary lanes on Rhode Island Avenue NE in DC, which were added in response to Metrorail station closures on the Red Lane ("How D.C.'s 'pop-up' bus lane became like any other lane of traffic," Washington Post).


Statistics on dedicated bus lane usage, Rhode Island Avenue NE, Washington, DC.  From the Express newspaper, 8/28/2018, p. 8.

Having lived in that area briefly, and knowing that bus transit service in the corridor is not high frequency, I didn't expect the experiment to go well, although I self-censored as to not make the smart growthers look bad ("Red Line shutdown will show the greatness of dedicated bus lanes," MobilityLab).

But I shouldn't ever forget that knowledge-based practice is best, not what Suzanne calls "wishcraft," where what people want trumps the likelihood of what is possible and likely based on reality.

From the standpoint of successfully implementing "controversial" transportation and land use practices, I recommend starting off in those settings and situations where you will be wildly successful, rather than taking on the challenge of successful implementation in a setting where success from the outset is no more than 50/50.



2.  San Francisco is adding bus lanes to Geary Boulevard.  I had no idea that the bus service in that corridor has about 54,000 riders/day, which is more than double the highest ridership routes in DC (which top out in the mid-20,000s).

The plan is to allow "private shuttles" to also use the lanes ("City approves red transit-only lanes on Geary for use by private shuttles, Chariot," San Francisco Examiner).

These can include the "Google buses" that take people from SF to work in Silicon Valley, which have been the target of anti-gentrification protests ("San Francisco's guerrilla protest at Google buses,"
"Geeks on the Google bus create giant social problem," and "The truth inside the Google bus lawsuit: gentrification," Guardian).

Some advocates are protesting against allowing private transit to use the lanes.

But from a transportation demand management perspective, facilitating the mass movement of people by transit should be prioritized, regardless of what entity provides the service.

Plus it will make the lanes more full of buses, thereby making it harder for automobiles to use the lanes illegally, in the face of minimal enforcement.

The best way to have the lanes be bus exclusive is to fill them up with buses.

Granted some people do make a legitimate point that the high use bus line should be the priority.  Given that it is likely at most to have a bus come every 3 minutes, it can withstand access to private transit.


It does raise the point I made in May ("Another example of the need to reconfigure transpo planning and operations at the metropolitan scale: Boston is seizing dockless bike share bikes, which compete with their dock-based system," that from the standpoint of managing transit and sustainable mobility services in a metropolitan area it will be a struggle for these government-led organizations to integrate for profit providers into the mix.

Portland Oregonian says that Seattle is now far more innovative concerning sustainable mobility than Portland

Portland Oregon is the poster child for sustainable mobility.

In the late 1960s, it was the first city in the US to decide to tear down an intra-city freeway, in this case along its waterfront, it created a downtown revitalization plan that prioritizes transit not driving and included the creation of a bus (transit) mall (1972), to which they later added light rail (1986).

There is an urban growth boundary which helps (but not exclusively, they still have suburban growth, a lot of it) to focus development on the city as opposed to the suburbs.

The city was the first in the US to introduce modern streetcars (2001) and since then it has extended this network, added a separate aerial tramway (2006), created the Pearl District out of a deaccessioned railyard, created innovative zoning in a variety of areas including retaining the innovation capacity of industrial properties, has a decent redevelopment authority (now called Prosper Portland)--creating an urban renewal district was a source of funding for the Yellow Line light rail, has strong promotion of biking, built a new bridge across the Willamette River exclusively for sustainable modes (2015), and promotes electric vehicles, including a block called "Electric Avenue."

They also do challenging public art on their transit system, art with some guts.

Until the recession caused them to drop it, Portland was one of the few cities in the US where transit was free in the core--a measure adopted to discourage driving--called the "Fareless Square."  (Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City do this too.  Seattle dropped it during the recession also.  In Canada, Calgary does it also.)

I joke that as a planner, when people come up to you and say "why can't we be like Portland?" it's paralyzing, because they don't understand that where Portland is today is built on 50 years of visionary and incremental decision making, including many bold moves.

-- "A summary of my impressions of Portland, Oregon and planning," 2005
-- Nohad Toulan: The University in the City," Metroscape Magazine, Portland State University

That being said, just because it's taken 50 years for Portland to get where it is today, doesn't mean that other cities need to take that long, because Portland is the ur example.  Plus, Portland has to really work at it because they don't have the intensity of business activity at the core of the city--a lot of that has been lost to the suburbs, especially IT.

E.g., cities like Washington, Boston, New York, etc., still have a higher sustainable mobility mode split than Portland, because of density, urban form, and retention of strong Downtown business centers.

But not unlike how Davis, California, formerly the #1 city in the US for bicycling for transportation, has been surpassed by other cities which continue to innovate and at times, much more boldly, perhaps Portland is being supplanted as the nation's premier example of sustainable mobility.

-- "Fifty years of bicycle policy in Davis, California," T Buehler, S Handy, Transsportation Research Record, 2008

The transportation beat writer for the Portland Oregonian thinks that Seattle has supplanted Portland.  He went up there to study the system and wrote about it:

-- "10 ways Seattle has blown past Portland in transportation moxie"
-- "Carless in Seattle: What I learned from the seat of an e-bike"

From the first article:

For years, Portland sat atop an invisible pedestal, routinely recognized as one of the nation’s top transportation cities.

Bike lanes, TriMet’s light rail network and the resurrection of the urban streetcar set the blueprint, in some ways, for other cities to step up their transit game.

Electric trolley buses are quiet when most buses are not.  Photo: Andrew Theen, Portland Oregonian.

Many have done just that, including Seattle. But now, in many ways, the city to the north is eating Portland’s brunch on transportation ideas, and we’re playing catchup. ...

While Portland is poised to finally act on some big projects, and TriMet plans its biggest bus expansion in its history, the city has undeniably stalled in addressing its transportation issues in recent years. Seattle, meanwhile, has been forging ahead with voter-approved projects costing in the tens of billions and transit ridership is up double digits there.

The Emerald City in recent years has bored long stretches of tunnels for cars or transit, spent more on light rail and buses per capita than any U.S. city and dwarfed Portland’s protected bike lanes infrastructure. And elected officials have demonstrated political leadership in putting transportation at or near the top of the city’s priorities list.

... Seattle offers both a cautionary tale for Portland and a glimpse of what is possible.

This transportation reporter/tourist recently took a trip north earlier this month to get the lay of the transit land. And while I experienced Seattle through emerald-tinted glasses, I saw many examples of our frenemies to the north being bold where Portland has stood still.

The ten examples:

1.  Protected Bikeways
2.  Ferries/Water Taxis
3.  Tunnels
4.  Electric-Assisted Bike Share
5.  Rapid Bus Service
6.  Tolls

Seattle bus island.  Photo: Andrew Theen, Portland Oregonian.

7.  Bus Islands (bike lanes shift behind bus shelters to maintain continuity)
8.  Railroad Passenger Service (he wrongly terms this "heavy rail," which is subway or "metro" service like the Chicago L or the NYC Subway)
9. Electric Trolley Buses

Which he summarizes in a master category as

10. Ambition which includes a willingness to fund expansion, and not just on rail.

Lessons. First, you can't rest on your laurels. Other communities continue to innovate. To remain innovative you have to keep innovating yourself.

Seattle Streetcar construction sign. Photo: Andrew Theen, Portland Oregonian.

I like how it promotes benefits: dining; shopping; playing.  Too often, planners don't promote the benefits of new programs and initiatives, or what density and intensification can bring in positive ways.

Second, to be able to innovate, you have to keep yourself apprised of what is happening across the field, not just locally or regionally but nationally and internationally. There needs to be ongoing coverage in local media not just about what is happening locally, but what is happening elsewhere.

For example, years ago I suggested to a writer at the Washington Business Journal that would be a good thing  for the newspaper to do, back when DC's streetcar was still in the planning stages.

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I do think that Seattle is definitely at the leading edge of sustainable mobility practice.  They have a very robust planning system.  They produce reports comparing their system to others and use this information in developing practice.

-- Best Practices in Transit, Seattle Urban Mobility Plan

The King County bus service metrics are national best practice.

-- King County Metro Service Guidelines, 2011
-- 2015 Update

Something missed in the Oregonian article, Seattle has de-prioritized parking provision in new development, first Downtown, and later (2006) in neighborhoods that were going to be served by light rail.  They also charge more for residential parking permits than DC.

They implemented streetcar service in four years, whereas DC took 13 years, even though both cities started planning at the same time.  They've received proffers from a developer and Amazon to expand streetcar service on the existing line.  They've extended and are continued to extend the streetcar system. 

Local referenda have provided more funding for expansion of bus service within Seattle, even as the rest of King County did not vote in favor.

As discussed in the article, they're expanding light rail and recent expansion to Capitol Hill and University Village (not quite yet to the UW campus) resulted in a doubling of daily ridership.

That being said, there have been failures.  Streetcar expansion has had problems and it looks like future service is underfunded and the city hasn't been honest about it.  The former transportation director (ex-DC) seemed to ruffle a lot of feathers.  They pretty much failed with bike share. 

OTOH, they've been one of the most successful cities in terms of the success of car sharing, especially one way car sharing--their Car2Go service is probably the most successful in the US.

As pointed out in the article, they've invested a lot in bus service and amenities and in bike infrastructure. Downtown, they have a pretty good wayfinding system.

The exurban Community Transit bus system uses double deck buses too, again something not captured by the Oregonian writer.

Plus they do this in a difficult political environment.  Yes, Seattle is a leading progressive city.  But it functions within a state that is divided between conservatives and progressives and the Legislature typically leans conservative, making support for transit and other pro-city policies difficult.  Plus there is this rabid anti-taxer, who frequently pushes statewide referenda that often have anti-Seattle effects.

Toronto's Public Space Incubator initiative

Park People is a regional and national Canadian organization promoting active use of park spaces. (One of the things they do is publish a set of technical assistance guides for citizens aiming to do events in parks, such as showing movies or presenting a community picnic.)

Rendering of a community café in Thorncliffe Park, Toronto.

A current initiative is the Public Space Incubator project, a competitive grant program providing funds for the accomplishment of placemaking projects ("5 new projects receive grants to shake up underused public spaces," Toronto Star) in Toronto parks.
From the article:

Park People’s manager of policy and planning Jake Tobin Garrett said the group received more than 70 letters of intent for the grants, which were narrowed down to the final 25 applications from which the five winners emerged.

“We knew we would get a lot of interest in this, but we were surprised to receive so many applications,” he said of the program, which was made possible by $340,000 in funding from the Balsam Foundation and renowned urban planner and architect Ken Greenberg and his wife, Eti.

The main objective of the challenge was to solicit ideas that could shake up how we generally view public spaces, Garrett said, noting the effective use of shared space is becoming more important as more people move into the city and into smaller condos and apartments.

A comparable example would be London's grant program for community bicycling projects, Cycling Grants London, which provides 10,000 grants to increase cycling in the part of under-participating groups ("Grants to encourage more Londoners to take up cycling," TfL).

More communities need to consider making some funds available to community-initiated programming, in order to stoke innovation.

Focused ways to deal with illegal dumping: camera-based enforcement

Yesterday's Washington Post has an article, "'Like the Wild West': Prince George's continues to fight abandoned cars, litter," about illegal dumping in Prince George's County and complaints by citizens and business owners that the County has no enforcement program. From the article:

Standing in front of Kearney’s with his rescue dog on a recent morning, Cummins surveyed the state of Marblewood Avenue.

To his right, there was a pile of wood and a tattered maroon sofa that sagged in front of a “Gorgeous Prince George’s — No Dumping” sign. To his left, a black Dodge Charger with no license plates was parked in front of a “No parking any time” sign. It was one of more than a dozen abandoned cars on the street that had been tagged by county officials with green stickers threatening impoundment. But the cars are rarely towed and the stickers easily pulled off, Cummins said.

“It only gets worse in the afternoon,” he said, shaking his head as he walked his dog inside and explaining that more cars and trash are typically dumped later in the day. …

Complaints through the CountyClick311 program and emails to officials — Cummins estimates he has sent 200 in the past four years — have resulted in little improvement, both Santivasci and Cummins said.

The trash problem isn’t limited to Marblewood Avenue. Under Alsobrooks, the state’s attorney’s office has prosecuted 215 illegal-dumping cases since 2014, Erzen said. According to Maryland law, people convicted of illegal dumping could face up to five years in prison and a fine of $30,000. …

This fall, the county plans to create an interagency task force that will focus on enforcement, tracking and prevention, including studying why people litter and how targeted marketing can reduce the behavior. The county will also deploy solar-powered compacting trash cans and recycling bins in litter hot spots.

It happens that on Monday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article, "Caught on camera: Look who the city nailed when it went after illegal dumpers," about the city's focused enforcement program, which puts cameras in areas in which illegal dumping frequently occurs.  There they've been fining offenders, there are repeat offenders, and yes, a majority of the offenders are from the suburbs.

Thanh Huynh of Fenton picks up trash in a Gravois Park alley between Nebraska and Oregon avenues on Wednesday, July 25, 2018, after she and her husband were sentenced to 40 hours of community service and fined $500 for illegal dumping while renovating a Dutchtown property. St. Louis Police patrolman Dave Krapf oversees the community service, making sure that offenders have water and plenty of trash bags. Photo by Robert Cohen.

When I first came across the St. Louis story online on Sunday, I was reminded of what it was like to live in DC in the period before 2005, when the city was marked by crime, abandoned properties, litter, graffiti, and illegal dumping--this was in my old H Street NE neighborhood within one mile of both the US Capitol and Downtown.

It's easy to forget those times, as most of those problems--well litter is still rampant and crime can still be a problem--have subsided.

Photos taken of these illegal dumping incidents led to successful charges against each of the perpetrators.  St. Louis City photo.

Illegal dumping.  At the very least, Prince George's County needs to look to St. Louis for guidance on how to better address illegal dumping.  And illegal dumping is a different problem from litter and needs to be addressed differently. According to the SLPD article the city has a special refuse tax designed to fund specific responses:

The cameras are perched on light poles throughout the city, trained on alleys that cut through stretches of town long forgotten and filled with piles of trash.

In the Baden neighborhood, on the city’s northern border, three of the 100 cameras are mounted in a one-block area just off North Broadway, a dumping ground so popular that a few days after city workers pick up truckloads of garbage, tires, drywall, mattresses and tree limbs, the area looks as if the crews were never there.

The eyes in the sky are part of a full-throttle effort by the city to clean up a mess that has been decades in the making. A trash fee increase approved by the Board of Aldermen last year paid for the cameras and also is funding new trash trucks and overtime for police officers to go after the culprits causing the messes. …

The cameras serve as 24-hour watchdogs, locked on problem areas and snapping images with every movement. The photos are downloaded weekly by police.

The cameras have led to 18 guilty pleas this year, including two by Ray Huffman, a contractor from Bonne Terre, Mo., a town about an hour south of St. Louis.

All but three of those who admitted to wrongdoing live outside the city of St. Louis.

Litter.  Litter is a different story from illegal dumping.  For years I've made recommendations.  Just having more trash cans isn't the issue.  Because the issue is people not caring enough to properly dispose of "trash" in general.  Although yes, not having cans in places where they are needed does increase litter compared to places where trash cans are placed.

The Post story also discusses the county's programs for waste diversion and recycling, which are a different issue entirely.

Community engagement.  In "Every Litter Bit Hurts" (2005), "Litter revisited" (2006), and "Community cleanups (and other activities) as community building and civic engagement activities" (2011) I've discussed various ways to begin to engage residents, students, and others in litter reduction programming.

In my personal experience, it's not enough for "one person" on a block to regularly pick up litter.  Sure, my block and the neighboring streets are cleaner than they would be because I pick up litter, especially recyclables.

But it doesn't result in people seeing my example and then being "inspired" to take independent actions of their own to pick up litter themselves. Maybe they do on their own property (not usually).  They definitely don't do it off their property.

Back when I did "broken windows" type experiments in the H Street neighborhood--focused litter reduction on the 600 block of I Street NE and regular cleaning of the bus shelter at 6th and H Streets NE, I found that the litter picking on I Street seemed to result in less trash being thrown, but cleaning the bus shelter made little difference.

Therefore, I think it's more important to do systematic efforts with community associations and schools, and more "adopt a block" and "adopt a bus stop" type programs.

And rather than focus on one "city-wide" cleanup day, I think it's better to have a full year of programming, drilling down to schools and neighborhoods and political subdivisions (wards/council districts, etc.).

WRT schools, I've always been intrigued by how in Japan, schools don't have custodians.  Instead, the students are responsible for cleaning the school.  Yes, it may not be as clean as floors buffed by a custodian running a floor polishing machine, but the kids learn responsibility and that if someone litters someone else has to pick it up.

It's why the "Every Litter Bit Hurts" piece recommends that all schools do community cleanups within a one or two block radius from the school every fall and spring.

Targeted cleanups in persistent problem areas. It happens this came up in my neighborhood recently, and I made a point that certain areas of the Greater Neighborhood/Ward have extranormal problems with litter.  Usually these are major intersections, industrial areas, areas along high use roads and railroad tracks, and besides commercial districts, often the residential blocks abutting these districts, for one half block to a full block beyond the commercial streets.

Those places should be identified, and a program to address the problems should be undertaken.

Metrics. One of the things I recommend is collecting and positing baseline data about litter. My favorite tool for this is the survey by Keep Australia Beautiful, which is more detailed than ones I've come across in the US.

-- Run a Neighborhood Litter Count, webpage, Keep Australia Beautiful
-- Simplified Litter Survey Form, Keep Australia Beautiful
-- Nattional Litter Index report, 2011-2012, KAB (data survey form on pp. 169-171)

Other litter reduction strategies. A few years ago, DC was one of the first jurisdictions to pass a 5 cent bag tax, levied on certain transactions and it has made a big difference in terms of discarded plastic bags as part of the litter stream.  While the Wall Street Journal originally covered the story with "the sky is falling" breathlessness, not quite one year later they followed with an article that concluded the program was working.

But it's just one gesture.  A container deposit law would be the best as research on states with container deposit laws have higher participation in recycling programs and less litter too ("What's the best way to get Americans to actually recycle?," Fast Company; "Do bottle bills boost recycling," Waste360).

Trash trucks as billboards.  One opportunity to message on litter and illegal dumping is on the sides of trash trucks.  Few municipalities seem to do this.  Baltimore is an exception.