Lowe’s Revises Plans … for Charlotte

Lowe's is planning a new store on Rte. 30 in Framingham; and as far as I know, the Planning Board is allowing them to use the same old big-box, suburban-sprawl sort of design that has made the Golden Triangle an aesthetic nightmare: unattractive, car-oriented and incredibly pedestrian hostile. Even when sidewalks exist, the streetscape is unpleasant (no one wants to walk by endless asphalt parking on one side and 4 lanes of whizzing traffic on the other side, with no attractive screening on either side). Although one Planning Board member urged Lowe's to site their new store at the street, instead of set back with the parking in front, I don't think any other town officials joined in.

Pity. We're losing a major chance to begin the process of transforming Rte. 30 to more of a park-once, walk-to-many-destinations boulevard. Instead, it's just another tangle of parking lots with no sense of place.

In Charlotte, N.C., meanwhile, the Charlotte Observer reports:

Lowe's has made substantial changes to its plans for a home improvement store on South Boulevard....The plans also move the garden center to the South Boulevard side of the store, next to a new 5,000-square-foot retail building that could house a coffee shop, a deli or other types of neighborhood retail. As in the previous plan, the store would still have parking on the roof and be lined by up to 60 condominiums.

The store will also include a pedestrian entrance on South Boulevard.

Here in Framingham, meanwhile, the main post office doesn't even have a pedestrian entrance, or pedestrian walkway from the sidewalk to the door; you've got to walk through the parking lot to get there. And the Lowes will make things worse, since it will knock down the old New England Telephone building that at least presents a decent front to the street.

Providence Plan: More Green, But More Building Height

"A team of urban planners laid out a vision for Providence last night that is a little greener and a little taller," the Providence Journal reports.

After listening to the 90-minute presentation, members of the audience who spoke expressed a love of parks and open space, but a fear of heights. ... The urban planners said there are ways for the city to grow taller and more pedestrian-friendly at the same time.

Providence officials hired Sasaki Associates of Boston to develop plans for a portion of the city center. Part of the proposal would include first-floor shops and restaurants, as well as lining streets with treets and lights.

As I've written before, New Urbanist planners are absolutely correct that a "sense of enclosure" is critical for a streetscape that people will actual use, as opposed to putting in sidewalks that few people walk on unless they absolutely have to. If you want a thriving retail district, whether a town center or city downtown, you need to do more than just put in sidewalks -- even if those sidewalks "meet code." Trees can help offer pedestrians an appealing environment in a smaller commercial center that doesn't have the kind of critical mass of population density and public transportation that downtown Boston or midtown Manhattan do.

When Parking Is The Problem … But Not What You Think

"Lack of parking" does not necessarily kill neighborhoods or business districts. In fact, requirement too MUCH parking can cause as many problems as too LITTLE, a number of planners argue.

Onsite parking requirements—currently under attack by UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup and the Victoria Transportation Institute among others—have, for now at least, sealed the fate of older communities like Sunland-Tujunga [Calif.] They have made it practically illegal to introduce pedestrian-oriented uses that don’t resemble the convenience retail or auto repair shops that have come to characterize commercial boulevards throughout the city.

So writes Mott Smith, a planner and "in-field" developer, in The Planning Report". Residents of that Sunland-Tunjunga L.A. neighborhood "must drive no less than 20 minutes to Glendale, Pasadena or Burbank just to be able to do some shopping on foot in a pleasant commercial district."

Sound familiar, suburbanites?

Demands that every enterprise have its own on-site parking, regardless of neighborhood circumstances, "seem designed with sprawl as the objective."

The answer is not to eliminate parking. Most suburbs won't have dense enough development to support thriving downtowns that a critical mass of people can reach by foot, bike or public transit anytime soon. I'm a realist. We're not going to wean American suburbanites off the convenience of the passenger automobile (although those who prefer non-auto-centric living should have options outside America's 10 largest cities).

The answer IS to design communities where you can park once, leave the car, and then enjoy walking around a pedestrian-appealing streetscape that has been designed with the ambiance and needs of walkers in mind. It's the "sweet spot" middle ground between ugly suburban sprawl that's designed solely for the automobile, and downtowns that lost out to malls 40 years ago because they couldn't provide enough convenient parking.

Smith urges development of "community parking," so people can leave there cars in unobtrusive yet convenient municipal lots.

It's not rocket science; well-designed communities have done this for decades. Concord, Mass. has some community parking, downtown Waltham's successful revitalization has it.... the key is have enough of it, well designed, so it's convenient and attractive for people to leave their cars there and then walk to an appealing business area.

It could have worked along Rte. 9. It would have transformed Rte. 30 in Framingham, had all the retail and commercial buildings been built at the street with parking in the rear, wide beautifully landscaped sidewalks installed, a truly attractive median strip been installed, crosswalks that actually allowed people to walk across the street on foot without constant fear been included, Panera's cafe been part of sidewalk activity instead of fronting a huge parking lot.... what an opportunity lost.

Shopping Mall Developer Promotes New Urbanism For … A City Downtown

Robert Stark "got started more than 20 years ago as a developer of generic suburban shopping centers. But he converted in mid career to New Urbanism, a movement based on the principal that communities are livelier when housing, offices and retail are mixed together, as in cities, rather than zoned apart, as in suburbs," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

Now, ironically, Stark is trying to use the lessons he's learned from developing suburban malls that mimic Main Streets to help resuscitate Cleveland, which Plain Dealer's architecture critic calls "a shrinking, poverty-wracked city where fresh thinking of ten gets the brushoff."

His concept? "Fill the surface parking lots in the Warehouse District with a million square feet of high-end shops operated by national and local retailers. He'd stack hundreds of apartments atop the retail floors. ... And he'd sprinkle office space throughout to add a diversity of uses."

Bolton TM Ponders Pedestrian-Friendly Article

Bolton (Mass.) Town Meeting members will be asked to vote on spending $10,000 to extend Main Street's sidewalk to a new senior housing project, allowing residents to safely walk to the center of town.

"We want to make the center more pedestrian-friendly so that people will walk if they can," Public Ways Safety Committee Chairwoman Cia Ochsenbein told the Bolton Common.

The idea is that in some places, the walkway won't be at the street, but set far back from traffic, similar to Stow's pathway. And while the location of the project may have started for the senior center, the idea is to allow all residents, not just seniors there, to do more walking downtown.