Yes, and that is why property owners of large buildings in CBD need to wake up to that fact. They need to provide services if they want to retain or attract residents and tourists alike by injecting different types of businesses in clusters.Owners of older buildings with street level shops that are vacant along Woodward and its side streets should incentivize in order to recruit potential shops. Choosing the types of establishments is important too, I am sure a long time ago like all big cities, Detroit had rows of similar businesses that competed for the buck, the ball game is different now, but 5 or 6 shoe stores on the same stretch over 2 blocks like tiny 8th street in Manhattan does.
Detroit has the bones but just needs to flesh it out. Some modern forbidding buildings that dont provide an entrance should be pierced and open to pedestrian traffic. In a downtown the size and quality of Detroit, there is potential to provoke responses from shoppers and office workers that dont exist in a shopping mall situation. If as you say Jackie, you need to travel by car from one convenience to another, you will continue abandoning the CBD as a shopping district. If, by the same token you walk on a major street that used to be fleshed out with shops and go on for two, three blocks without access to an entrance and are confronted by inimical structures; buildings that seem to say; whatshyou want boy, why you lookin' at me like that?
Then abandonment will be your response...
Developers need to act in concert and promote the city core and I wonder how much energy has gone into doing that. I think the acceptance of the suburban commuter's detachment from Detroit can be reversed. The blank canvas of Detroit needs to start with money and jobs brought back to the core. This means that the city's main actors will have to raise the bar in the excitement category.
Casinos bring money to the establishments and excitement but by definition, they cannot be all that open to the street and their goal is to keep you in there.
Detroit needs special equipment to be added maybe in certain areas like sidewalk canopies over stretches where continuous rows of shops would be injected. It will happen, but promoters need to come to the fore and aggressively seek out and help out potential shopowners. And all this effort would probably need to be effected in clusters for added convenience, security, attractiveness and investment capabilities.
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