Chicago, Inglewood, Minneapolis and commercial corridor redevelopment | Stadiums, arenas, and downtown transit malls

I was reading an article about Minneapolis' transit (bus) mall, Nicollet Mall ("Nicollet Mall tries to look beyond retail in latest attempt at reinvention," Minneapolis Star-Tribune), and I was struck by this paragraph:

The Downtown Council is creating a “Nicollet Mall prospectus” for prospective investors. It will include an inventory of vacancies, points of contact, any relevant incentives or financing tools and outline civic leaders’ priorities and ideas for the mall.

I made such a suggestion, that commercial district revitalization programs needed all this information at their fingertips for each property in their district, when I was doing consulting in Pittsburgh in 2008!  

This image makes Nicollet Mall look prety fun.

And considering all the articles over the past ten years about Nicolett Mall (e.g., "Revamping Nicollet Mall as a 24-hour district is one idea for downtown Minneapolis," "Frey’s plan to take buses off Minneapolis’ Nicollet Mall next year meets resistance") it should have already occurred to them.

(WRT the bus proposal idea.  It's true.  A bus mall is not a congenial places.  Buses are loud.  And that was my experience with Nicolett Mall quite some time ago.)

Similarly, when I first got involved in Main Street commercial district revitalization c. 2002 at some point I came across an article by Neal Peirce, "Main Street Niches in a Mass Sales World," making the point that revitalization is a process that takes a couple decades, and never really ends.

I wrote about that at the onset of covid, "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," making the point that commercial districts should have been planning for multi-modal access long before the distancing requirements arising from covid best practice.  Also see "A point about pedestrianizing streets: Boulder; Alexandria, Virginia, Cleveland Park, DC."

Lots of empty space around SoFi Stadium.

The LA Times has an article about Inglewood's Market Street commercial district, "Inglewood’s downtown still struggles. Can it spark to life before World Cup, Super Bowl?," and how it languishes despite its proximity to SoFi Stadium and Intuit Dome, home to the LA Clippers basketball team.  From the article:

The sports and entertainment corridor along Prairie Avenue has become a major economic driver for the city of Inglewood, with SoFi Stadium grossing over $175 million in revenue and bringing in 1 million visitors in 2023 alone, according to Billboard.

And yet, on most nights, Inglewood’s downtown is subdued and inactive. While a few longstanding businesses have managed to attract regular customers on the otherwise empty street, many others have closed due to rent hikes and eminent domain to make way for planned transit centers.

SoFi had the Super Bowl in 2022 and the Washington Post had an article, "A home Super Bowl is good for the Rams. But is SoFi Stadium good for Inglewood?," about how the rest of the city didn't seem to be experiencing improvement in the face of the stadium.

My criticism is that you shouldn't be allowed to build such facilities without adjacent access to high frequency rail transit.  Inglewood now is planning various surface transit improvements including a couple of bus hubs on Market Street ("Project Overview -- Inglewood Transit Connector").  Ultimately they were supposed to get a People Mover mode to connect to the LA Metro--at least ten years after the stadium opened.  But that doesn't seem to be happening (" A $2.4B Rail Project For The 2028 L.A. Olympics Has Been Suspended—Here’s What’s Happening Instead," Secret LA).

My thought was um, why don't cities develop mitigation/improvement plans in association with stadiums and arenas before they open, including funding from the team owner as a condition of the contract?

Not having such plans is why I've developed "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities" as a way for a community to try to get the best possible outcomes from sports facilities deals.

From the Axios article, "Renderings: New project looks to transform United Center, West Side."

I don't know if Chicago is getting funding from the owner of the Bulls basketball team, but in association with the construction of a new arena there, they are preparing an improvement plan for the adjacent district ("Chicago seeks to make the West Side's Madison Street shine again," Chicago Sun-Times).  From the article:

... the thoroughfare is the focus of a city study aimed at helping bring new retail, housing and other activity to three miles of Madison Street, stretching from the shadow of the United Center to the heart of K-Town.

“Madison [is] probably the most visible and historically significant commercial corridor on the West Side,” Chicago Department of Planning Supervising Planner Brian Hacker said of the Madison Street Corridor Study. “We’re looking at the levers that we can pull as a city planning department — zoning, regulatory, environmental ... to facilitate development.”

Madison Street could see a rebirth, according to plans being developed by the city and and West Side community groups.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times 

It’s not a bad time to rethink Madison Street, particularly within the study’s boundaries that include the Near West Side, East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park.

East of the study area, construction will soon begin on the 1901 Project, a $7 billion effort by the Reinsdorf and Wirtz families to turn those barren parking lots around the United Center, 1901 W. Madison St., into a new neighborhood and entertainment district.

(Of course, the question is why didn't the basketball team owners do such a project to begin with, instead of making barren an area already distressed.)