For all of the success that DT Charlotte has had, the retail aspect has yet to be fully and successfully completed.
Both Charleston and Greenville SC, have been able to revive DT retail because the old storefront buildings were largely spared from the wrecking ball in the '60's, '70's and '80's. Even so, Greenville has a difficult time keeping restaurants (with their high revenue, and thus ability to pay higher rents) out of space that could house retail establishments.
This is why it is SO important to save what little remains of storefront buildings in Springfield, LaVilla, and the urban core.
Reading the article below, you could easy substitute 'Charlotte' with 'Jacksonville'. Retail follows a strict 'model' and only the Downtowns that most closely reflect that 'model' will find success.
QuoteCharlotte's uptown shopping dilemma
By Mary Newsom
Associate Editor
Posted: Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010
Uptown Charlotte, for all its success in recent years, is like a marching band without trombones. It's figure-skating without sequins, or winter Olympics without snow.
What's lacking? Call it window shopping or stores or retail. Whatever you call it, it's hard to have a satisfying downtown without it. And when you walk down Charlotte's center city sidewalks, you don't see many stores.
This always comes up when people describe what they'd like to see uptown. Thursday night was no exception. It was one of many suggestions at a public workshop at the West Boulevard library, part of the uptown 2020 Vision Plan: Why isn't there more shopping?
The question is easy. The answer is much harder, a tangle of history, architecture, city policy and retail and development industry habits. But before I get into that, I want to dispel some myths.
There's no retail uptown. A 2007 center city retail assessment done for the nonprofit Charlotte Center City Partners found about 430,000 square feet of food/beverage space and 33,000 of store space. People think it isn't there because most of it is hidden, tucked into office lobbies or the Overstreet Mall. Example: People always say uptown needs a bookstore. Uptown has a bookstore. But you'd never know it unless you went into Founders Hall.
Even the new EpiCentre - finished after the retail study - doesn't offer simple, off-the-sidewalk access to stores. It's like Founders Hall without a roof - and more nightlife.
Everything is "exclusive," not for regular people. In fact, low-cost restaurants abound. But again, many aren't visible. And too many are closed on weekends.
"We must solve the riddle of urban retail," CCCP president Michael Smith told me recently. "It's the last great frontier."
Unfortunately, as Smith knows, it can't be solved as easily as simply writing "Get more retail" into a plan.
To understand the complexity of the problem, it helps to know a few key retail truths.
First: Stores do better with other stores nearby. Most people won't walk 1,200 feet between stores. (Shopping mall developers know this.)
Second: Retail space in new buildings is too expensive for the unique, local shops and restaurants people always say they want. New space brings national chains. See next item.
Third: It's hard for developers to get financing unless they lease to chains with a track record of success.
Fourth: Most national chain stores shun downtowns. They have their models - suburban big box, regional mall or maybe stand-alone-at-the-interchange. Luring them to a downtown without pre-existing stores is a chicken-and-egg dilemma.
In Charlotte, many decisions and designs, public and private, over decades essentially destroyed the places where street-front retail might naturally have occurred in a reviving downtown.
I don't have space here, and you wouldn't want to read the whole analysis anyway, but the upshot is that the old store buildings are gone and new buildings have mostly bad retail space. Yes, new retail space is being built (or was, until the recession), and a few spots aren't badly designed. But here's another key stumbling block:
It isn't close enough to other good retail space to spark wider retail energy. That's the problem with depending on Big Macho Projects to revitalize your downtown, as Charlotte did. Their bulk combines with retail-free (but needed) civic spaces such as churches, libraries, courthouses, parks, etc. Add in those loathsome parking deck rears. (Can't we require them to be lined all around with retail?) What remains are a few isolated shards of the retail that used to be.
Two important moves are needed. First, the city must revamp its uptown zoning. No more parking decks facing any sidewalk. No more interior retail space. No more office lobbies where stores could be. I wish the city had had the vision to do this 15 years ago.
Second, new retail space will have to be built from scratch in one of those not-yet-developed areas far from The Square. And it will probably have to begin with charmless national chains and grow more local flavor later.
You can have a band without trombones, of course. Trumpets and tubas can fill in. It's just that you'll always be thinking, wouldn't this be so much better with trombones?
Good article. These things definitely impact Jacksonville's urban core.
Storefronts and walkability my boy, storefronts and walkability; one of the most important recipes for a successful downtown. Gotta have them or you possibly won't draw the people downtown, that is, those that don't live downtown.
And the businesses that are "tucked away" so to speak basically only caters to the people that work in and around the building they are in, and close way before time.
"HU"