Quote Originally Posted by douglasm View Post
I'm late to this party and have not read all of the thread, but it appears to be acting like all the other "downtown retail" threads that have come before it, and appears to suffer from the same problem, that is "What KIND of retail are you talking about"?

The way some people talk, you'd think they want to recapture the glory of the past. Forget it. That dream died 40+ years ago, and even cities with "thriving" urban cores are finding that the shopping districts are becoming more and more oriented towards residents than as a regional draw.

I'll grant you that you may find one of the new smaller urban Target stores or something like them will find downtown attractive, but in order for downtown retail to work, it's going to be important to figure out what your target audience is, and that's probably office workers and downtown residents. Once you establish what crowd will be drawn, the easier to figure out what kinds of shops and services are needed and have a chance to survive.
Amen. I love how folks say, "Retail won't work in Detroit!". Well, there are 50,000 potential customers downtown every work day. Thousands more *live* in the area, and thousands more visit for special events. When you think that a behemoth of a store like Walmart [[not that I'm advocating for one) can survive in every other podunk town in America, this is a pretty decent size customer base!

I think where Detroit gets hung up is:

1. People think that any downtown retail needs to be some sort of "regional draw" that suckers people into coming downtown from thousands of miles away. The people are already coming--don't set your businesses up to fail by forcing them to compete with Somerset or Great Lakes Crossing or Ye Olde Partridge Creek Shoppes.

2. People think that downtown retail *must* be national retailers in crappy suburban-looking buildings, surrounded by acres of free parking.

I think if we can get these two ideas out of our collective asses, we might start to see something amazing.