Mall in downtown Detroit?

[boater4life]

Just hypothetically speaking, do you think a mall with some popular store brands would succeed in downtown Detroit? I think it would be an awesome idea and just one more thing that would draw people to the area.

[Hypestyles]

It needs to happen, and sooner rather than later. A survey of the still-vacant and unrenovated structures downtown needs to be done. The remaining structures need to be marketed aggressively to developers who have the money in-hand to actually do something with them. Why isn't there an arcade/restaurant like Dave & Buster's downtown yet?

[313WX]

Why isn't there an arcade/restaurant like Dave & Buster's downtown yet?

Actually, Punch Bowl Social [[which is like a Dave & Buster's for adults) just opened this month...

[detroitbob]

Bedrock is actively marketing their designated retail frontage. I would expecct to see significant announcements throughout the year...the previously announced goal is to have the retail to coincide with the Streetcaropening "celebration...2017 should be a amazing year.

[detmsp]

No, a downtown mall is a terrible idea. Downtown Detroit has very few residents. A mall would have to succeed by bringing people in from outside of downtown including suburban areas. Why on earth would someone from the suburbs drive to downtown and deal with parking and traffic to shop at a mall when there are plenty of malls in the burbs? For downtown retail to thrive, it has to offer something different. That could be unique shops [[ie john varvatos or really anything that isn't a chain) or just a unique environment [[for example, shopping in sommerset certainly would have a different feel than strolling through campus martius and merchants row). But a mall would not be a draw. There are plenty of failed downtown malls to serve as warnings against this.

Just in case I wasn't clear, I'm not saying downtown retail won't work, just that a mall won't work.

[Dexlin]

A full-on mall is not in the cards any time soon. But, a small shopping arcade with a dozen or so popular shops? I don't see why that couldn't work even now. I'd always imagined that anything that goes on the old Hudson's block would include a small shopping arcade on the first floor.

[dtowncitylover]

Just hypothetically speaking, do you think a mall with some popular store brands would succeed in downtown Detroit? I think it would be an awesome idea and just one more thing that would draw people to the area.

No. The suburbanization of a city will never work.

[BankruptcyGuy]

No, a downtown mall is a terrible idea. Downtown Detroit has very few residents. A mall would have to succeed by bringing people in from outside of downtown including suburban areas. Why on earth would someone from the suburbs drive to downtown and deal with parking and traffic to shop at a mall when there are plenty of malls in the burbs? For downtown retail to thrive, it has to offer something different. That could be unique shops [[ie john varvatos or really anything that isn't a chain) or just a unique environment [[for example, shopping in sommerset certainly would have a different feel than strolling through campus martius and merchants row). But a mall would not be a draw. There are plenty of failed downtown malls to serve as warnings against this.

Just in case I wasn't clear, I'm not saying downtown retail won't work, just that a mall won't work.

What would you think about something like Water Tower Place in Chicago? [[7ish floors of retail in one building?)

[dtowncitylover]

What would you think about something like Water Tower Place in Chicago? [[7ish floors of retail in one building?)

No because we have plenty of empty storefronts along Woodward and Washington, and inside Capitol Park that need to be rehabbed and used first.

Look to the RenCen for direction on how not to do things.

[ghettopalmetto]

What would you think about something like Water Tower Place in Chicago? [[7ish floors of retail in one building?)

Malls are dying all over the country, even in areas with the income to support them. The only exceptions seem to be the enormous high-end malls [[Tysons Corner, King of Prussia, et. al.). Why Detroit would embark on an idea fresh out of the 1980s is beyond me.

Lots of talk about retail on these threads lately, but the Gorilla in the Room is that neither downtown nor midtown yet have a sufficient population base [[usually considered to be 20,000 people) to support large amounts of retail. Never mind being able to support risk-averse chain stores.

I think the other part of this discussion that irks me a bit is that it smacks heavily of top-down planning, which we know *always* works so well in Detroit. Is there anything inherently wrong with growing businesses from the ground-up?

[Midnight Rambler]

Just hypothetically speaking, do you think a mall with some popular store brands would succeed in downtown Detroit? I think it would be an awesome idea and just one more thing that would draw people to the area.

This idea is dead on arrival. There's not a mall concept in the world strong enough to compel suburbanites to go to downtown Detroit for shopping, and shoplifting would be a real problem.

[Mackinaw]

Detroit can do JUST fine by focusing retail on the streets of downtown and midtown. At some point within the next decade demand in these areas might justify a large retail arcade downtown, i.e. first/second floor corridors linking two streets [[don't we have a couple old buildings well-configured for this sort of thing already?), but I don't think anything more elaborate than that would be a good thing. In New York, the outer boroughs have a lot of small/dense malls, but they are almost entirely comprised of big boxes that need a place to go [[i.e. Atlantic Terminal-Barclays Center mall in Brooklyn-- it's full of big boxes and it complements a vibrant stretch of street-based retail that runs up and down nearby Fulton Street. We have a long way to come to justify any sort of organically-conceived mall like Atlantic Terminal. Anything mall development at this point would be too top-down and would retard the development of our all-too-empty streetscapes.

[313WX]

This idea is dead on arrival. There's not a mall concept in the world strong enough to compel suburbanites to go to downtown Detroit for shopping, and shoplifting would be a real problem.

Don't be so sure.

If it's something suburbanites are absolutely ga-ga over, but can't find anywhere in the suburbs, they'll have no choice but to go downtown for it [[like with the Tigers, Red Wings and Lions games).

[hybridy]

i'd rather have all the first floor retail on woodward and around campus martius + grand circus filled out. if anything would be built it needs to be mixed-use and incorporate lots of uses [[residential, hotel, & office) to ensure foot traffic. other cold climate examples...city creek center in SLC was bankrolled by the LDS church and block 37 in chicago is just barely starting to work now that they're added tons of luxury rentals...

some recent examples in the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Creek_Center [[ie: partridge creek + apts & condos)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/108_North_State_Street

[Ststannies]

Malls [[a bad idea from the start) are finally starting to fall out of fashion. A "mall" is exactly what downtown doesn't need: We don't want to re-create the suburbs downtown. While we do need the stores, they should be free-standing and interwoven into the existing fabric of the city. Malls are BORING and all look the same, and now they're even populated by the very same stores,from Vermont to California to North Dakota to Mississippi.

[Ben]

I haven't posted on here for a while, but I think that this is a topic that comes up over and over again and is really not a realistic discussion. The fact is that [[mall type) retail does not work in downtowns. At one time people were willing to drive downtown to shop at places like Husdson's, Kern's and Saks but that time has been gone for 50+ years. The stores followed their customer base and moved to the suburbs. Detroit as a region is already over saturated with shopping options. Outside of Somerset and 12 Oaks [[to an extent) most area malls are no longer in vogue. With the advent of the internet we all know that brick and mortar stores are hurting. Other non-flagship cities have tried to push retail into their city centers and they have failed. City Centre in Columbus, Circle Centre in Indianapolis, Downtown Cincinnati, St. Louis Centre, and Downtown Pittsburgh have all been disasters. I hope that Gilbert and others realize mall based retail just won't work.

[canuck]

I haven't posted on here for a while, but I think that this is a topic that comes up over and over again and is really not a realistic discussion. The fact is that [[mall type) retail does not work in downtowns. At one time people were willing to drive downtown to shop at places like Husdson's, Kern's and Saks but that time has been gone for 50+ years. The stores followed their customer base and moved to the suburbs. Detroit as a region is already over saturated with shopping options. Outside of Somerset and 12 Oaks [[to an extent) most area malls are no longer in vogue. With the advent of the internet we all know that brick and mortar stores are hurting. Other non-flagship cities have tried to push retail into their city centers and they have failed. City Centre in Columbus, Circle Centre in Indianapolis, Downtown Cincinnati, St. Louis Centre, and Downtown Pittsburgh have all been disasters. I hope that Gilbert and others realize mall based retail just won't work.

Malls were an urban concept to begin with. There are many old examples in places like Milan, Paris, London where developers built arcades over an alleyway and voilà. I'm not saying it is the best solution for Detroit because for one thing transit options would need to be added for this to work. Transit options that would be favored over automotive displacement by suburban residents. You could always make it work with multistorey parking and do away with surface lots as much as possible.

Malls work in Toronto and Montreal where they connect with office buildings, condo towers and metro or subway stations. There are at least a dozen major malls that start underground in Montreal, and the street retail downtown is not affected by this as much as you would think. I hate the repetitiveness of the offer in many of these places but they are convenient, well lit, conditioned and heated, and patrolled. I like street retail better, but here, with the weather in january and february upon us, malls make sense for a lot of people especially the elderly, the handicapped, buskers, the homeless and so on...

Also, there are different kinds of malls with low to high-end offer. I can walk from my place to Alexis Nihon Plaza or move on to Westmount Square's boutiques where the shops are more exclusive and where they specialize in medical clinics, etc... They are connected via the metro access tunnels. In the central part of downtown, the other malls are also connected via the RESO or PATH as they call it in Toronto. There are some metro stations like McGill and Peel that have underground connections to 3 or 4 malls in a row, and these are mostly found at the base of office buildings and even museums and concert halls.

[nain rouge]

Downtown Indianapolis has a large mall called Circle Centre. It opened in the '90s and worked quite well for a time, but is struggling a bit at the moment. So while it's a somewhat feasible project, I just don't think it'd be worth the investment.

Yes, Detroit is at the center of a much larger metropolitan area, but as we all know, Metro Detroit isn't hurting for malls. The market is oversaturated as it is. Most of Detroit's population is scattered around the edge of the city, an area serviced by tons of nearby suburban malls that nevertheless appear to have seen better days despite proximity to underserved Detroiters.

Really, the heyday of the big mall is over, barring some huge, unforeseen changes. The remaining big malls will try to squeeze out whatever profits remain for as long as possible, but - again - it doesn't make much investment sense to open a huge mall at the moment. Most malls will be gone in 20 years, with only a few regional destination malls surviving.

Lifestyle centers" appear to have some juice left, but the preexisting built environment in Downtown Detroit essentially represents a de facto lifestyle center. There's no need to build anything. If big retailers event move in, it'll be a piecemeal event scattered across numerous properties.

[iheartthed]

Malls were an urban concept to begin with. There are many old examples in places like Milan, Paris, London where developers built arcades over an alleyway and voilà. I'm not saying it is the best solution for Detroit because for one thing transit options would need to be added for this to work. Transit options that would be favored over automotive displacement by suburban residents. You could always make it work with multistorey parking and do away with surface lots as much as possible.

I don't think these are the same things as malls or urban malls. Malls are deliberate developments to produce shopping districts where it did not previously exist. It's not organic in the same way that arcades are organic -- usually materializing around some type of transit node or other high traffic area.

And, IMO, that's why urban malls tend to do so poorly in the U.S. They are usually built in some underutilized part of town without the fundamentals to naturally draw in patrons once the shiny factor wears off. They are conceived of as the destination itself, instead of as a complement to some other destination. Atlantic Center in Brooklyn was used as an example of a successful urban mall, but that place has actually been relatively struggling for most of its existence. It has only recently become more "successful" after the Barclays Center was built across the street and Atlantic Terminal has become a more prominent transit hub for commuters.

[G-DDT]

IF [[big "I" big "F"), one could improve on what Trapper's Alley or the Rencen [[yes, they had a Waldenbooks and Harmony House and all of that) had [[or even the one I saw in the New Center back in 1991)-I say go for it. If it is true that Meijer's is opening up right where my dad's old high school was [[not "R.U. high?"), than I have much more respect for them than I ever had before. After all, they are a Michigan-based business that competes with Wal-Marts [[and they've been known to let folks in poor situations get free low-grade antibiotics, if they do the paperwork-happened to me when I needed it most in Champaign, IL.). They are not the "sh*tty Acres" kids once joked about. Heck! Wholefoods wasn't daunted to open a location in Wayne State. I only wish that one chain of Cincinnati-based grocery stores would man-up and open a few locations within Detroit [[like where the old Farmer Jack's was in Hamtramck on Joseph Campeau).

[313WX]

I only wish that one chain of Cincinnati-based grocery stores would man-up and open a few locations within Detroit [[like where the old Farmer Jack's was in Hamtramck on Joseph Campeau).

"That one chain of Cincinnati-based grocery stores" is still spooked about all of the money that was wasted at 7 Mile and Gratiot.

[canuck]

I don't think these are the same things as malls or urban malls. Malls are deliberate developments to produce shopping districts where it did not previously exist. It's not organic in the same way that arcades are organic -- usually materializing around some type of transit node or other high traffic area.

And, IMO, that's why urban malls tend to do so poorly in the U.S. They are usually built in some underutilized part of town without the fundamentals to naturally draw in patrons once the shiny factor wears off. They are conceived of as the destination itself, instead of as a complement to some other destination. Atlantic Center in Brooklyn was used as an example of a successful urban mall, but that place has actually been relatively struggling for most of its existence. It has only recently become more "successful" after the Barclays Center was built across the street and Atlantic Terminal has become a more prominent transit hub for commuters.

Well you are right when it comes to the need for two or more major sites to play off one another, and the key ingredient is how you get your pedestrian traffic to frequent these spaces. I think that like any commercial street, a self-contained mall store manager realizes that there is competition all around, but the principle of anchor stores applies in major developments evn though the big stores are struggling vis-à-vis the smaller fish.

Mexx boutiques in Canada are in receivership, they did well for years but found their clientele less responsive over time, their stuff just wasn't catering to newer younger crowds. Same with Jacob, a local fashion chain here in Quebec. One guy who started a chain of stores here called San Francisco boutiques, was very successful and decided to go for a bigger shopping experience. He built stores in suburban malls "Les Ailes de la Mode" that were as big as a Sears store, say; but only for fashion. He took over an old dept store in the city and it went south after a little while, and was bought by Fairweather of Toronto, and they turned it into a discount store.

These places keep evolving and they constantly have to be on their toes to supply what the buyer wants, and they have to listen to their employees, their customer base. What Detroit needs to do, and I mean Duggan and his administration is to examine the retail needs of the people of Detroit. There has to be a way to determine what workers, tourists and above all the folks who live in town want, and this way, approach developers with numbers, albeit humanly generated numbers. The city will get more stores and jobs and the most novel transit scheme in North America. That is what I wish on Detroit.

As for the claim that internet will gobble up the shopping experience, well if it does, count me out. What is the use of buying fashion if you can't flaunt it for a woman at least. Where will people go to commune? Honestly, the idea that a pair of shoes or a coat or a chesterfield can be had by the click of a button is a lot more depressing than walking the aisles of a store, no matter where it is situated.

[expatriate]

I should think so. There are enough office workers downtown that might stay after 5 were there anything to stay for. After all they are already parked, and staying downtown for a little shopping or noshing might ease their commute.

[56packman]

You aren't the first one with this idea.

[D_Town]

Naw....I would say woodward [[between Clifford and Gratiot) would be more "touristy" with shops and restaurants unique to the Detroit area [[AllSaints, NikeTown, UGG, Uniqlo, Scoop, Grand Lux, etc). Around Campus Martius/Cadillac Square would have main anchors [[Flagship APPLE, Bloomingdales, and Barneys). The final stretch of woodward towards Jefferson would be high end stores unique to metro Detroit [[Hermes, Calypso, Jack Spade, Louboutin, etc), basically Oak St in Chicago.