Salvation Army Downtown

Does the presence of the Salvation Army in a prime downtown Framingham retail location hurt efforts to revitalize the downtown business district? Selectmen would like to move the organization out of its highly visible Concord Street storefront, according to the MetroWest Daily News. Supporters of local social service agencies are outraged, blasting the desire as trying to hide the poor and the fact that they need help. I understand the concerns of both sides, and suggest everyone take a deep breath here and try to think about what makes a good downtown business environment while also providing needed services to all in the community.

For a good shopping district, you want a critical mass of appealing storefronts. I don't think a massive, ground-level insurance or accounting office belongs on a prime shopping boulevard, and nobody's attacking the desirability of demographics of those clientele. What about the Salvation Army? Selectmen aren't trying to move them out of town, just out of their key downtown retail location. However, it's a fair question to ask whether they're also trying to move other businesses off that main shopping street - ones that don't target clients in need, but also don't fit well into a vision of a retail streetscape. It's also a fair question to ask the Salvation Army supporters whether it would truly hurt their mission if they were on a different but still accessible and visible street downtown.

There are three options here. 1) Encourage the Salvation Army to move to a nearby location out of prime retail space, probably by offering to buy their existing location as well as sell them a nearby one they find adequate for their needs. 2) Live with the Salvation Army as it exists on Concord Street. 3) Work with the Salvation Army to improve its existing facility - find a way to spiff up the exterior, and be willing to focus on their retail operation in their Concord Street windows. A nice, appealing second-hand store could conceivably work in a revitalized downtown. If more upscale shoppers are added to the mix of people populating downtown, and they're also encouraged to patronize the Salvation Army store with an attractive storefront, that makes it more likely the organization will end up with more donations of used clothing and such.

The Importance Of ‘Third Places’

A livable neighborhood has more than a place to live and a place to work. It's got another place - a third place, as CoolTown Studios explains, noting Ray Oldenburg's book on the topic -- an appealing community gathering place, not for official events, but to hang out. That's what Cheers was; that's what the Central Perk coffee shop and the diner were in Seinfeld. And that's another important anchor function the new library in Saxonville could have provided.

(aside: I hope all the shortsighted Town Meeting members who voted against the library, thinking that this year's snapshot-in-time financial situation was a good reason for making a decision that impacted 20+ years, saw the story in yesterday's Globe about how the state's financial problems have bottomed out, and revenues are on the upturn. By the time the library building affected our budget in a couple of years, state aid could be up. But these folks couldn't possibly see that over two decades, financial trends just MIGHT have changed....ARGH....)

Anyway, CoolTown Studios last week pointed to an outdoor beer garden of all things in the midst of Astoria, Queens (part of New York City). "By day it's welcome for kids and parents with a full Czech restaurant menu, and by night it's abuzz with gen xers and yers, accompanied by live bands on some weekends."

Of course, a Third Place doesn't necessarily have to serve alcohol. They can be cafes without alcohol, or even public squares. Shopping malls are the closest things to this in much of suburbia; but they can't touch the well-designed public square or street designed for strolling, lined with cafes, that much of Europe (and Montreal) enjoys for this function. (Photo below: Geneva's old town)

Randolph Zones For A Walkable Business District With A Sense Of Place

''We are looking at creating a walkable, pedestrian-friendly downtown and not a cement, automobile-driven strip of fast-food restaurants, banks, and liquor stores."

--Michelle Tyler, member of Randolph's Master Plan Implementation Committee

Randolph Town Meeting recently approved a zoning change that would allow creation of a business district that would keep out "formula" fast-food chains, gas stations, and " other businesses that local leaders deem out of keeping with their vision of the downtown as Randolph's civic hub," the Boston Globe reports.

Town officials stress that they don't want to ban such businesses. However, they want control over the sense of place of the heart of downtown, and believe such businesses are a better fit just outside the town center.

At first glance, it looks like these officials understand that great downtown business districts don't simply happen by getting all the neighborhood storefronts rented. Someone needs to have a vision as to proper mix of retail and other businesses, and look & feel to encourage people to stroll and stay.

It’s Not Pedestrian Friendly If People Aren’t Walking

How can you tell if an area is pedestrian friendly? There's one easy and useful test: If you don't see people out regularly walking, something about the environment is causing people on foot to instinctively not use it.

There may be expansive sidewalks and official crossing lights, but that's not enough (Speen Street and Rte. 30 in Framingham are prime examples). There may be a large sweeping plaza for pedestrians (whether a park by the water in Cleveland or acres of cement in City Hall Plaza, as I mentioned a few days ago) that SHOULD be attracting people on foot but DOESN'T because it's poorly planned. If you see people aren't out there walking, something is wrong with the design.

Maybe it's the scale, and there's not the "sense of enclosure" pedestrians crave in a walking environment, either from properly sited buildings (not too far back) or good landscaping (a dense row of trees will do it). Perhaps it's a lack of any buffer between sidewalk and rushing traffic. Maybe in the case of a business district, the pedestrian crossings are too offputing.

Consultant Laura Hawks from the Renaissance Design Group spent three days in Fairfield, Iowa and noticed " plenty of people enjoying Central Park -- but most of them didn't cross the street to shop at the stores surrounding it," the Fairfield Daily Ledger reports. Bingo! Something's wrong with the design of the neighborhood.

Possible solutions? More prominent crosswalks, extending the sidewalks at intersections so the distance from curb to curb is less daunting, and wide, colored center strips to "provide a boulevard-like refuge for pedestrians crossing the street."

If you're ever tried to dash across the extraordinarily wide intersection at the end Leggat-McCall Connector and Rte. 30, you'll understand how important such things are. That intersection, and the lack of sidewalks on the south side of that intersection, are the main reasons why all the office workers out on foot in the area at lunchtime don't walk the few extra minutes to Shoppers World -- and why most don't even walk along Rte. 30.

How Can Parking Best Co-Exist With Pedestrian-Friendly Development?

One of the difficulties in creating a pedestrian-enticing streetscape in the suburbs is designing adequate parking that doesn't destroy on-foot ambiance. In cities like Boston and New York, population density is high enough, public transit is robust enough, and enough streets were designed before the emergence of our auto-centric culture, that walkable environments thrive. That's not the case in many other communities. A report from the Maryland Governor's Office of Smart Growth takes a detailed look at the dilemma and possible solutions:

[O]ne of the biggest challenges facing smart growth is identifying new ways to address the need for parking while minimizing its negative impacts and encouraging better and different design. Parking is consuming a huge amount of land that could otherwise be developed. Surface and structured parking lots present sterile, unattractive environments that deaden city and suburban streets alike, further isolate uses and preclude lively pedestrian-friendly streets. Moreover, the adverse environmental impacts of parking lots, particularly on water quality, are increasingly recognized.

As developers attempt to meet the parking requirements of their projects, they find themselves beset with obstacles related to zoning, financing, and design, just to name a few. Parking requirements now drive many site designs, and are often the make or break issue for financing new developments. Too many quality smart growth projects remain on the drawing board because they simply cannot solve the parking dilemma. We need parking, but we need to re-think parking design, parking financing, and parking supply and demand to better meet the needs of communities, developers, and users. . . .

Multi-level parking garages in addition to being cost-prohibitive, often leave entire city blocks with little street level interest and activity. No one wants acres of pavement or dead gaps in the urban fabric, yet from the user’s perspective parking needs to be convenient, safe, and accessible, and from the developer’s perspective parking needs to be cost-effective.

The report examines a number of issues and potential ways of dealing with them, such as "design[ing] sites such that vehicles aren't the dominant feature." Note that the need for parking is clearly recognized, but it shouldn't overwhelm every other aspect of a project - as they clearly do in developments like the typical mall site, which aesthetically strikes people on foot as an unappealing sea of asphalt.

Thanks to Smart Growth Online for the link.