Downtown Mall Rumors False

[DetroitPlanner]

Average Daily Traffic map of the Metro Area. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/detmetro_19640_7.pdf If you take the sum of the Lodge, Southfield, I-75, I-94, I-96, and the radial streets within the city, traffic is greater than any other place. Not that other cities don't have significant traffic. But Detroit has five significant freeways [[plus the Davison), plus surface streets with lesser but still high amounts of traffic. Not all those people necessarily stop in the city. There is probably some duplication in numbers. But a lot of people do commute through and could do shopping here.

Although I'd love to see expanded mass transit and something like DC's Union Station here, retail would probably have to accommodate cars here.

You are way over counting. Cars rarely stay on one freeway or arterial to get from a to b. Besides it makes more sense for folks who drive and live at 8 & I-75 to go to Oakland Mall Rather than Downtown. Same is true for folks living in the Dogleg, chances are they would go to Southland or Fairlane. You want to cause more congestion by making longer trips? The key to making the city urban again is shopping by where you live. For most of Detroiters, this means Fairlane, Eastland, Northland or Warren.

[canuck]

You are way over counting. Cars rarely stay on one freeway or arterial to get from a to b. Besides it makes more sense for folks who drive and live at 8 & I-75 to go to Oakland Mall Rather than Downtown. Same is true for folks living in the Dogleg, chances are they would go to Southland or Fairlane. You want to cause more congestion by making longer trips? The key to making the city urban again is shopping by where you live. For most of Detroiters, this means Fairlane, Eastland, Northland or Warren.

Yes, your last sentence makes sense, but we are also talking about attracting residents and tourists and office workers downtown, and providing an urban experience most downtowns continue to do. The fact that Hudson's no longer exists and that the commercial strips on major streets are depleted makes a case for some shops to be injected in a mall setting, albeit delicately.

Novine mentions that downtowns with malls are mimicking suburban lifestyle choices and in a sense, he is right. But there are a lot of malls in my city's downtown and the competition is fierce among them and yet the street retailers are there and making good business alongside the contained malls. That is because everything in downtown is connected to a metro station, a suburban rail terminus or plenty of buses. There are malls of various sizes that manage to incorporate access to cinemas and supermarkets without folks ever having to come out from underground if say, their hotel or condo apartment is connected to the subway. In other words, transit is the bloodline that facilitates all this. When Gilbert wants to build on the Hudson block and include oversized parking, he is repeating the pattern of development that has ironically led to Detroit's destitution.

Folks make obvious choices about shopping downtown or in the burbs. They will invariably choose free parking over the metered kinds. If you take the streetrail, bus or subway, and go catch a show at a cinema or museum, you are freer to walk about and spend some time shopping in the city core. You are also less likely to take the city at face value, detached from the people and the texture of life. Building details suddenly strike a chord which in a car seem like you are watching this on TV,
and this remoteness and the speed at which you can dispatch from a to b just damages your experience of the city repeatedly.


Let me tell you again why I am not against a mall from Detroit. It may mimic the Detroit suburban lifestyle, but that is maybe the best way of attracting locals if done right.

Let's say we used the Woodward block facing the Hudson's block, between Grand River and Gratiot. Use the two first floors of these buildings as a mall providing a mix of services and retail. The upper floors for offices continue to do business and maybe a special kind of tenancy could be favored like federal or state licensing that provide circulation. Street access has to happen at the four corners and on the center of each block at least; no endless curtain walls.

There have been shopping malls in cities for at least 200 years. Just look up The Burlington Arcade, London. The Galerie St-Hubert in Brussels. The Passage du Grand Cerf in Paris, and the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuelle in Milan. Some of them have had checkered histories but they have survived and actually helped the city.

I will give you a local example of the Centre de Commerce Mondial which was a rehab of a whole block in Old Montreal in 1992. The atrium was built over the alleyway between the old buildings and was a passageway where the fortified walls around the city were built. The complex is equivalent to a large skyscraper laid on its side. There was a luxury hotel added at one end [[Intercontinental) that matched the existing architecture. It has a 30 store mall and a 600 seat foodcourt.

[DetroitPlanner]

Some of these shopping districts are literally accross the street from where the majority of Detroiter's live, the periphery. It makes no sense to take a car or bus downtown when you can do a short walk, bus ride or drive. You are just putting added congestion onto the streets by lengthening trips that could be made over a short distance.

[GUSHI]

Detroit can only support a mall of party stores and dollar stores. No retail of value is going to come to Detroit.

Don't forget the wig shops,

[jtf1972]

...It makes no sense to take a car or bus downtown when you can do a short walk, bus ride or drive.

You neglect the fact that having wheels under our asses is, for a great many people in this area, more comfortable than having their feet on the ground. It is a sad truth that we can see people every day that drive to a store, park as close as possible, then find one of them little electric carts to ride through the store in. It is truly sad.

The question/problem is how do you break the people of their addiction to driving to the corner store who drive around looking for the best spot? Sure, they could walk, which would be healthier [[and in some cases, even faster all things considered,) but they don't even consider it.

[313WX]

You neglect the fact that having wheels under our asses is, for a great many people in this area, more comfortable than having their feet on the ground. It is a sad truth that we can see people every day that drive to a store, park as close as possible, then find one of them little electric carts to ride through the store in. It is truly sad.

The question/problem is how do you break the people of their addiction to driving to the corner store who drive around looking for the best spot? Sure, they could walk, which would be healthier [[and in some cases, even faster all things considered,) but they don't even consider it.

Well first off you would hav to create an environment conducive to walking.

Surface parking lots [[especially in January), urban prairies, strip malls and unreliable public transit options do not make an environment conducive to walking.

Now, on the other hand, storefronts/homes sitting up against a street forming a wall and rail lines running every 5-10 minutes [[getting people to their destinations in no longer time than they would arrive there by car) are conducive to walking.

[jtf1972]

313WX... I agree completely. However, we aren't going to wave a magic wand & make Detroit into what it needs to be overnight. Planning to get to that point & bridge the gap is necessary. Everything needs to be looked at in this city. There are reasons that go beyond simple biases why stores have been built on the periphery of the city while Detroit misses out on building its tax base time and again.

Places like the planned Gateway shops are fine, so long as they are built on the outer edges of the city. As you move closer to the core the style needs to change to reflect a denser area.

Detroit needs to figure out not how to compete, but to beat competitors for business and people. Logistically it has an advantage outlying areas can't attain no matter how much they want to believe they can. This is the center. This is the core. This is Detroit.

[DetroitPlanner]

I don't have a problem walking to groceries or convience stores, but then again, I would not consider living in a place where I could not.

Fact of the matter is a lot of people are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. They would not know functional design if it bit em on the butt. Too concerned about fashion and appearances and are going to the poor house but at leat they are wearing a Coogi sweater.

[Novine]

"The question/problem is how do you break the people of their addiction to driving to the corner store who drive around looking for the best spot? Sure, they could walk, which would be healthier [[and in some cases, even faster all things considered,) but they don't even consider it."

Most of these people don't live in the city. The ones who live in the suburbs, many of them won't even consider crossing 8 Mile for any reason. Instead of encouraging development for people who don't live in Detroit and won't shop in Detroit, plan for development for people who actually want to live in an urban environment and will appreciate an opportunity to walk to a store or a shop.