Tag Archives: redevelopment

Opposing gentrified suburban strip malls in order to give immigrants and others cheaper business opportunities

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Plenty of suburban critics detest strip malls for their ugliness, auto-dependence, and effect on traditional shopping districts. But, Kaid Benfield argues they may need to be protected from gentrifiers as they offer cheap real estate that can be taken advantage of by immigrants and others.

And yet:  As these properties have declined, so have their rents, making them affordable to small, often entrepreneurial businesses.  Particularly as immigrants have settled in inner suburbs (where many of these fading commercial strips are), businesses owned and patronized by the immigrant population have occupied many of these spaces, in some cases alongside small start-ups owned by longtime community residents as well.

The risk is that, as we reshape these old properties with new buildings and concepts, the replacement properties will be much more valuable than their predecessors; indeed, that’s why new development is appealing to investors and how it is made possible.  Overall, that’s a good thing.  But small businesses either go under, unable to afford new rents, or relocate as a result.  The logical place to relocate in many cases will be vacant storefronts in other strip malls in locations less attractive to the businesses’ clienteles.  What to do?…

According to Ritchey’s article, Asheville’s strip malls offer a setting for synergies to develop and help connect entreprenurial businesses to each other:  for example, establishments offering diverse but complementary products and services can share a customer base, trade ideas, and cross-promote.  This strikes me as analogous in some ways to synergies available to start-ups in more urban “business incubators.”

It makes a lot of sense to me and, in many parts of the country, it is newer Americans who are benefitting the most from these opportunities.  For them, a successful business in a strip mall is the American Dream at work.  Three years ago, Aaron Renn (The Urbanophile) and I wrote separate articles about a sort of organic economic revitalization being initiated by immigrants within the existing fabric of our older suburbs.

Interesting argument. Three quick thoughts:

1. Does this mean strip malls might be viewed differently in the future by suburban critics? While they might prefer strip malls are not built in the first place, this does seem like a good use of resources.

2. When people argue that small businesses are really important to the American economy, how many of these small businesses are in strip malls? Could the humble strip mall be one of the backbones of the American economy?

3. This is tied to larger issues about redevelopment in mature suburbs. In American metropolitan areas, many suburbs are built-out and have no large land parcels for new development. There is a lot of potential then for utilizing existing structures or knocking them down and doing something new. If people don’t like strip malls, what would replace them? How much density are suburban residents willing to accept in their neighborhoods or nearby?

Former downtown Wheaton Jewel store demolished, makes way for medical building

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The closing of the Jewel in downtown Wheaton in 2008 upset a number of residents but the building is being demolished and making way for a new medical building:

Bulldozers have arrived at the former Jewel Osco site in downtown Wheaton, demolishing the building that has been vacant for several years.

It’ll make way for a new DuPage Medical Group building, which is expected to bring in new jobs and more activity into the city’s downtown…

Just south of the site, construction of a new Mariano’s grocery store is ongoing, along with an apartment complex called Wheaton 121 being built a few blocks north. Both are slated to open in the fall.

The DuPage Medical Group building, which will be three stories and span 40,035 square feet at Main Street and Willow Avenue, is expected to be done by April, said Dennis Fine, Chief Operating Officer. The project will relocate 45 employees and 12 physicians from their current location at N. Main Street and W. Cole Avenue.

Fine expects to add at least 15 jobs and three to five more physicians to accommodate the services being added at the new location.

The city has been looking for years for a way to utilize this site and help the part of downtown south of the railroad tracks. It doesn’t sound like this new building will be a huge source of jobs but it does reinforce the image that downtown Wheaton is a place to be. Medical offices fit the image downtown Wheaton is looking for: more upscale residences, offices, and business establishments. Plus, the new grocery store will provide a more upscale business so the downtown will have gained a better grocery store plus this new medical office. I would guess that a lot of downtowns in the Chicago area would be happy if a medical facility redeveloped a vacant retail site.

However, this does lead to a newly vacant building on the north side of Wheaton in a more commercialized corridor. What might go at this site at Main and Cole?

An English town that got rid of its traffic signs and lights sees improvement in street life

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This idea is not unknown but it is still highly unusual: an English town recently removed all of its traffic signs and lights.

The village of Poynton in the U.K. has undertaken one of the most ambitious experiments to date in this type of street design, whose most prominent advocate was the Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman. Variations on the shared-space model have been implemented in other European cities since the early 1990s, but never before at such a busy junction. Poynton’s city leaders sought the change because the historic hub of their quaint little town had become a grim and unwelcoming place…

The project didn’t come cheap, costing about $6 million. Engineers completely reconfigured the intersection at the center of town, replacing a traffic light with two “roundels” that cars must negotiate without the guidance of traffic signs. Pavements of varying colors and textures are the only signal as to which type of road user belongs where.

It was a controversial move for the community of some 14,000 people, which lies about 11 miles from Manchester in the northwestern part of England. Now, a year after construction wrapped up, a video called “Poynton Regenerated” makes the case that the shared space scheme maintains a smooth flow of traffic while simultaneously making the village center a more attractive and safer place for pedestrians, leading to increased economic activity downtown…

In the “Regenerating Poynton” video, several people who admit to having been skeptical of the plan say that after it was put in place, they came to see it as a dramatic improvement. A local city councilor says that the main street no longer seems like a dying place, as it had for years before the change. Some 88 percent of businesses in the area are reporting an increase in foot traffic, and real estate agents say they’re seeing new interest in buying property in the area.

The social interactions that result from shared space — eye contact, waves of thanks, and the like — are one of the main selling points for advocates.

What is most interesting about this presentation is that it is less about safety, and traffic crashes do tend to go down when measures like this are taken, and more about how it can improve street life. When motorized vehicles are no longer privileged on the streets in the ways that they are in most communities, street life can be more open and lively. So, perhaps we will see more people in the coming years selling this plan more as a viable redevelopment option rather than a safety concern.

What to do with closed schools

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Once schools are closed, what should communities do with them?

One of the thorniest issues (in what is a veritable forest of mess) is what to do with those school buildings once they’re empty. Often, the facilities are in poor shape, with promised renovations put off quasi-indefinitely. Many are located in depressed neighborhoods. And there are only so many developers with the know-how and resources to convert classrooms into condos or a community center.

Then, there are often complex laws that limit who may or may not take over city-owned property. Some cities ban charter schools from moving into empty traditional schools (officials know that moving a new school into an old school can foment frustration with the district); others require time-consuming input from the community. Laws like these can tie school districts’ hands and slow re-development…

It’s not unusual for closed schools to sit empty for years at a time. A 2011 Pew Charitable Trusts report estimated that there were 200 vacant public school campuses in six cities — Philadelphia, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. — alone…

Kansas City isn’t the only place to have found success with school building conversions. In Chicago, one closed school became an Irish American Heritage Center with a library, museum, and regular step dancing performances. In Lansing, Michigan, an elementary school was turned into a hub for technology start-ups; another was converted into a business incubator. The third was reborn as a gym.

It sounds like the biggest issue is for cities to move relatively quickly when schools close and find new uses. In fact, the buildings might even generate a little income that could then help the cash-strapped cities that had to close schools in the first place. But, having no plan simply means communities lose potential opportunities.

With that in mind, what is Chicago planning to do with all the schools they just announced would be closing?

How the final approval for Naperville’s Water Street project could change the downtown

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Naperville’s downtown is expanding. Last week, the city council approved a new development on Water Street:

Following months of debate, councilmen tied up loose ends in a brief discussion before voting 6-2 in favor of the project.

The development proposed by Marquette Companies is targeted for 2.4-acres bounded by Aurora Avenue on the south, the DuPage River on the north, Main Street on the east and Webster Street on the west. The plan calls for a 166-room boutique hotel, 524-space parking garage, restaurants, shops, offices and a plaza.

Proponents say the project will add a much-needed hotel to the downtown and add to the vibrancy of the area. But others have expressed concerns about issues such as building heights, traffic, parking and impact on the Riverwalk. Councilmen gave preliminary approval to a scaled-down version of the plan last month and reaffirmed their vote Tuesday…

In addition to upcoming discussions about a possible financial incentive, the city also must negotiate with Marquette Companies over what public improvements will be funded by tax increment financing money because the project sits in a TIF district.

This could be a big change for Naperville. Here’s why:

1. It moves the downtown across the DuPage River in a big way. This could lead to more changes down the road, perhaps eventually connecting the downtown to Edwards Hospital.

2. It brings in a significant hotel presence into the downtown. Naperville has a number of hotels along the I-88 corridor which helps provides space for nearby office complexes but these could help downtown businesses, festivals, and other functions.

3. The addition of a big parking garage will help relieve parking pressure in the downtown. In recent years, there had been a lot of discussion about a new garage on the site of the Nichols Library parking lot but that may be shelved for a while now.

4. It puts a mixed-use development right on the Riverwalk, something that has been lacking to this point. While the Riverwalk is popular and opens up the space along the DuPage River, most of the businesses near the Riverwalk back up to it rather than face it and incorporate it into their space.

I’m looking forward to seeing what this development looks like and how it contributes to the downtown.

Converting American churches into housing units

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More American churches are being converted into housing units:

The building is one of a number of church-to-home luxury conversions popping up around the country. As dozens of churches close or move to different quarters each year, they’re finding second lives as condo developments and townhouses.

The conversion process is growing more common as shrinking congregations and shifting demographics have made it difficult for some congregations to stay afloat financially. According to a March report from CoStar Group, a real-estate research firm, 138 church-owned properties across the country were sold by banks last year, compared with 24 three years earlier…

Architects have found creative ways to convert these historic buildings—which often have 40- or 50-foot-high ceilings, few or no interior walls and stained-glass windows—into homes and apartments that will sell for millions of dollars.

But it isn’t an easy process: Not only do the structures need intensive interior reconstruction and upgrades to meet modern building codes, but they often have been granted landmark status, further complicating renovations.

This is a good example of retrofitting. As the article notes, hundreds of churches have closed in recent years and converting the churches generally leaves the outside while making the interior reusable. One irony in this story is that I have read in recent years about growing conservative churches making use of vacant shopping structures, often big box stores, rather than building new churches or megachurches. So, in the suburbs, some churches are sacralizing profane spaces while in cities, new residents are secularizing once-sacred spaces.

It would also be interesting to hear how these new residential units were received in the communities in which they were built. The article profiles individual owners and builders but doesn’t talk much about the zoning process or reactions from neighbors. It sounds like people generally want to save the historic church buildings but there might be concerns about adding new residents. On the other hand, converting the churches means the property can be added to the tax rolls and generate revenue for the community.

Also, the examples of this article include fairly expensive condos and housing units. Has anyone turned churches into truly affordable housing? If so, the mission of the church might continue even if a congregation no longer meets there.

Comparing New York locations “Then and Now”

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Photographer Evan Joseph has co-authored a book that compares New York City locations Then and Now.

The book, an update to an earlier edition, pairs old photos of New York City with current photos of the same location. While photos in the previous edition didn’t always match exactly the heights and camera angles of the originals, in this edition, Joseph went through a painstaking process of matching the angle of each old photo. He did so by loading each historical image onto his iPad, he explained to us last week, going to each street photographed, and looking around until he could lock down the location of at least one building in the old photo. “Then I would keep doing it…keep moving around and around until I could get that building into the same location.”

While Joseph had no desire to use 100-year-old photography equipment to replicate the old photos—and is, in fact, known in the photography community for carrying around a lot of modern equipment—he found that he did miss one aspect of “then” photography. “What I quickly figured out was that the elevated subway lines that ran all over New York…were amazing photographic vantage points that no longer exist. So many of them were taken from 25 feet off the ground,” he says. “That is just an amazing place to shoot a building. It gets you above the traffic, it gets you above people, but not so high up that it’s a rooftop view. It renders the target…in a very natural and flattering perspective.” Joseph was left to replicate that perspective as best he could with a monopod, “really like a window-washer’s stick that I attached a photo mount too. Then I rigged up some remote triggers so I could fire the camera from holding a stick 10 feet about my head.” (Joseph also used his connections to developers and real estate brokers to get some of his shots from within other buildings.)

The book also gave Joseph the opportunity to do a little aerial photography, with a helicopter shoot of lower Manhattan. The goal was to replicate a photo that was probably taken from an airplane c. 1935—the result is the then-now pairing above.

Aside from that photo of lower Manhattan, downtown is underrepresented in the book, Joseph says, because most of the century-old photos of New York were taken by commercial architectural photographers, and there wasn’t much call for them to take photos of residential buildings. Instead, the photos of residential areas are snapshots, incorporating streets more than buildings. Still, Joseph thinks there may be material there for a future edition of the book, and we look forward to it.

I’ve always been fascinated by this concept. Once buildings disappear, people tend to forget about them and, of course, new generations have difficulty picturing what was there before. What was once a common streetscape known to thousands (or potentially millions in big cities) simply disappears. Skylines can change quickly as well.

Photography projects like these can also help residents and others get a quick view of urban change. While certain changes get a lot of attention (like the Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago), smaller changes frequently take place and may not be noticed until a whole series of changes occur.

A few years ago, I remember seeing an aerial black and white photograph of Lake Shore Drive crossing the Chicago River. In this photo, Lake Shore Drive still had its famous S-curve (see here) and there weren’t many big buildings in the immediate area. This area has been transformed quite a bit throughout Chicago’s history: it was once a railroad and dock area along the Chicago River that in recent years has become a center for condominiums (like the Aqua building which attracted attention after opening in 2010) and office buildings after Lake Shore Drive being moved closer to the lake. I spent a lot of this with this photo and thinking how much had changed in just several decades.

 

Plans for purchase of Wheaton Grand Theater; hope for larger economic impact

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Many older American downtowns are looking for ways to bring in new business and revenues. One way to achieve this is to pursue entertainment opportunities. Here is how this is currently playing out in Wheaton, Illinois where there is a perspective buyer for the Wheaton Theater:

Downtown property owner and lifelong Wheaton resident Jim Atten said he has “verbally agreed” to buy the theater, constructed in 1925, from Elmhurst-based Suburban Bank and Trust.

“It’s going to take a while to do, but our plan is to turn it into a performing arts and movie theater,” Atten said…

Atten said, if the purchase goes through, an extensive fundraising effort will be launched to make a dent in the necessary repairs and remodeling in the building, which he estimated could be about $5 million…

The theater closed in the 1990s and after an unsuccessful attempt by the Wheaton Grand Theater Corp. to revive it by hosting concerts, the deed was given up to the bank after coming up short on a loan payment.

Last year, Wheaton voters rejected a proposal to let the city use $150,000 in public funds each year to renovate the building…

Still, [Wheaton mayor] Gresk said the expected purchase is a “wonderful, huge first step.”

We’ll see how this moves forward. The benefits of a theater for a smaller downtown could be large: theaters can generate money themselves but can also attract other business as theater goers eat and shop nearby, festivals could make use of the space (think film, music, art, and theater festivals), and this building could serve as an example of how to effectively remodel and utilize older spaces. Smaller downtowns need spaces like this to succeed, partly to help provide energy and people for all of the downtown but also to make good use of storefront space that might be difficult to fill with other uses.

Quick Review: The Great Inversion

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I recently read The Great Inversion, a book by Alan Ehrenhalt (see an interview about the book here), about how more Americans are seeking denser living areas. This is not a new idea as plenty of commentators have addressed this in recent years but this book attempts to provide a broad overview of the phenomenon. Here are four thoughts about the urban trends discussed in this book:

1. This book is built around case studies. This is both a strength and weakness. As a strength, Ehrenhalt examines several American cities such as Phoenix, Atlanta, and Denver that don’t get as much attention from urban sociologists. Even as urban sociologists admit that the urban landscape in America has changed a lot since the beginnings of the Chicago School in the early 1900s, most studies examine “traditional” American cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. But these case studies seem more impressionistic than anything else; hard data is difficult to find in this book. There are few figures about how many Americans have actually made the choice to move (versus surveys that suggest Baby Boomers and Millennials desire denser homes). The case studies often look at smaller areas of a metropolitan region, such as the Sheffield neighborhood in Chicago, but don’t address the big picture across regions or throughout the United States.

2. Ehrenhalt is careful to try to straddle the middle line between urbanists and suburbanists (defined a few times as people like Joel Kotkin). But the problem with this is that I don’t think he makes his argument very strongly. Here is what he wants to argue: American urban areas will look quite different in a few decades as more Americans seek out denser housing. However, he doesn’t want to argue this too strongly and backpedals from this at points. Here is his conclusion about Tysons Corner, the last case study of the book:

I’m convinced of that because I see all around me a generation of young, mainstream, middle-class adults who are looking for some form of midlevel urban experience: not bohemian inner-city adventure, but definitely not cul-de-sacs and long automobile commutes. There are more of them coming into the residential market every year. They like the idea of having some space, but they aren’t feeling in terror at the mention of density. They aren’t willing to sell their cars, but they appreciate the advantage of having another way to get around. If Tysons Corner is rebuilt on a reasonable human scale and with a modicum of physical appeal, they will go for it, imperfect as it may be.

And then we will begin to see experiments of this sort in suburbs all over the country, launched by developers and local governments that may still be a little nervous about density but will know one thing for sure: If Tysons Corner can be reborn, nothing in the suburbs is beyond hope. If the effort to rebuild Tysons Corner somehow succeeds, it will become a national model for retrofitting suburbia for the millennial generation.

It is less of an argument that there is a strong push for these options and more of an argument that demographics will change urban forms. This may be correct but it seems like Ehrenhalt seems unwilling to push too hard for this.

3. Ehrenhalt suggests our cities will look more European in a few decades as poorer Americans move to the suburbs and wealthier Americans move back to the cities. This may indeed happen but I think Ehrenhalt generally downplays the cultural factors behind American suburbia and the difficulties that may occur in this demographic inversion (see #4 below).

4. This book reminds me that there are a lot of potentially interesting things that could happen in American suburbs in the coming decades. In particular, the densification of suburbs has the potential to change the character of a number of larger and/or thriving suburbs. Many communities might turn to retrofitting out of desperation in order to start generating tax revenues from vacant properties. However, while Ehrenhalt thinks that demographics will push in this direction, I think there will still be substantial pushback in some places. I’m thinking of a suburb like Naperville, a community that definitely could incorporate high-rises in the downtown and along the I-88 corridor but has thus far resisted big projects. Perhaps circumstances could change but I imagine it might take a while for this to happen.

McMansions and sprawl in New Jersey

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Humorous maps seem to be all the rage (does it all go back to the Jesusland map of 2004)? A new map of New Jersey has an interesting label for Central Jersey:

A colorful map of New Jersey that went viral on Facebook on Tuesday has offended some while amusing others. It labels some areas of the state with racial stereotypes, but designates the Hudson County area as “HIPSTERS.” South of Hudson, the label is “POOR MINORITIES.” Central Jersey gets labels like “MCMANSIONS” and “LAWYERS DRIVING HYBRIDS.”…

An article on a Westfield news website credits the design to a 22-year-old Rutgers graduate who says he works for the state Department of Environmental Protection and also “works with the Geographic Information Systems, making maps of preserves and researching resource conservation.”

He says that he’s talked to people all over the state, so he has the experience to know what’s what.

To be clear, there are actually two areas in central New Jersey that involve McMansions: one is labeled “executives living in McMansions driving Mercedes-Benzes” and other is labeled “McMansions!!” Is this the best kind of exposure for a government employee these days? I wonder if anyone will object to the McMansion label – would even the people who live there object?

New Jersey is often equated with McMansions. However, I do think that the blanket reference doesn’t necessarily refer to the particular homes but rather refers to a larger process of sprawl that many people associate with New Jersey. This spread of sprawl is summarized in this October 2010 story:

A report released in July by Rowan and Rutgers Universities found that, after comparing aerial photos of the state, the years from 1986 to 2007 were New Jersey’s most sprawling period, when unprotected land was developed most rapidly.

When development ground to a halt in mid-2007 as the housing market collapsed, New Jersey had more acres of subdivisions and shopping malls than it had of upland forests and was down to its last million acres of developable land, according to the report, called “Changing Landscapes in the Garden State.”

Two-thirds of the land developed in New Jersey from 2002 to 2007 became “low-density, large-lot” residential properties, swallowing farmland, wetlands and unprotected forest, the report found. Preservationists and some developers say that the building of large single-family homes on oversize lots cannot continue at that rate, even if the housing market recovers.

This sounds like the challenge many built-out suburbs are facing: how does one do development when there is very little or no remaining open land? Redevelopment and building up might become popular options.