Understanding the St. Johns Town Center

[copperfiend]

Get rid of the drive-up parking (thats usually not available anyway) & the roads going right down the center of the main strip (forcing cars & people to play chicken with each other), and you might have a true pedestrian open-air mall.

I would also suggest creating some garages and cutting down some on that ridiculous surface parking acreage. The map seems to indicate there is more land area taken up by the parking lot than the actual shops. But yes you're right the layout as it stands now encourages people to do the silly parking hunt game for several minutes and nearly run people over.

I believe there were plans to make the parking lot between Cheesecake Factory and Dillards into a parking garage eventually. Not sure if that still is under consideration.

As someone who has worked for a company that considered building a parking structure, I can tell you it is very expensive.

[Doctor_K]

I believe there were plans to make the parking lot between Cheesecake Factory and Dillards into a parking garage eventually. Not sure if that still is under consideration.

That's the one I'd heard of and was thinking of.

[jcjohnpaint]

Well as long as it has oceans of surface parking all around I would consider it a mall without a roof.  For this reason I think it would not work downtown.  I am not saying stores in the SJTC can't exist DT, but this place does not have a sliver of walkability I would desire in an inner city neighborhood.  I am also sick of almost getting run over by a giant SUV with a small bleach haired lady driving. 

[Timkin]

It has some nice restaurants , and a few nice stores, but overall I just do not care for the concept. A previous poster mentioned that it boils down to one's taste and I concur.  I miss the downtown shopping district as it was in the 60s-70s.  That is what I would like to see return to downtown.  I don't suppose it is possible on the scale of what it WAS, but  I would shop downtown, if there was anything there to patronize.

[danem]

I am also sick of almost getting run over by a giant SUV with a small bleach haired lady driving. 

The real silliness is that every single little artery of road and almost every parking lot aisle is filled with cars scootching and stopping at 5 MPH, each car with one person inside. It's the price we pay for a place being popular, and the best indication we need more places like this or other places even better than this elsewhere in town.

[justinthered]

Maybe they could use a parking elevator? They use them over here in Korea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf1dTNSJBu8

[duvaldude08]

It has some nice restaurants , and a few nice stores, but overall I just do not care for the concept. A previous poster mentioned that it boils down to one's taste and I concur.  I miss the downtown shopping district as it was in the 60s-70s.  That is what I would like to see return to downtown.  I don't suppose it is possible on the scale of what it WAS, but  I would shop downtown, if there was anything there to patronize.

Family Dollar perhaps?? LMAO all jokes aside I would actually go to that Family dollar when its built. I like to do things on my lunch break and it will be pretty darn close to my job. LOL

[iMarvin]

Maybe they could use a parking elevator? They use them over here in Korea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf1dTNSJBu8

Those look cool!

[jcjohnpaint]

Well the place...although I do live near and go often is very car centric and feels like this.  You can make the argument that the middle is town like, but still seems to me like a roofless mall.

[ProjectMaximus]

For a cool example of a suburban lifestyle center (if I have the concept right), check out Birkdale Village north of Charlotte.

http://www.birkdalevillage.net/



http://www.helenadamsrealty.com/communities/birkdalevillage

Wow, I love that picture! It just strikes my fancy and makes me want to go walk around there.

[ProjectMaximus]

Well the place...although I do live near and go often is very car centric and feels like this.  You can make the argument that the middle is town like, but still seems to me like a roofless mall.

Naw...not town like at all. Not when the only business happening is retail.

[ProjectMaximus]

Maybe they could use a parking elevator? They use them over here in Korea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf1dTNSJBu8

Those look cool!

There are a lot of cool parking innovations coming out of Asia. I've seen carousel and elevator spaces within traditional parking garages, and even really small, temporary elevator spaces that can more or less create instant parking garages for special events. In chicago there's an apartment bldg along the river that is too narrow for cars to turn around (along with parking), so they utilize a car elevator to get between floors on the parking garage levels.

Obviously if the town center developers dont need even a basic garage, then they won't be spending even more money to further conserve space with these techniques. It's so much cheaper to pave spaces since they have the land. Hopefully a garage does go up behind cheesecake though...I could possibly see that since there's a critical mass of shoppers in that area. But I'm not holding my breath.

[copperfiend]

Would people on this site feel differently about the SJTC if it were essentially a bigger version of Tapestry Park?

[peestandingup]

Get rid of the drive-up parking (thats usually not available anyway) & the roads going right down the center of the main strip (forcing cars & people to play chicken with each other), and you might have a true pedestrian open-air mall.

I would also suggest creating some garages and cutting down some on that ridiculous surface parking acreage. The map seems to indicate there is more land area taken up by the parking lot than the actual shops. But yes you're right the layout as it stands now encourages people to do the silly parking hunt game for several minutes and nearly run people over.

I believe there were plans to make the parking lot between Cheesecake Factory and Dillards into a parking garage eventually. Not sure if that still is under consideration.

As someone who has worked for a company that considered building a parking structure, I can tell you it is very expensive.

I dont think a massive structure is the answer either. The drive-up parking & roads in the actual center of the shops obviously isn't going away.

The design of SJTC to me has always stunk because they were trying to please both cars & pedestrians by having them share the same space, but ended up screwing both of them. Cars dont have any parking near the shops they want (so they play the "circle around a hundred times" game until they give up & park at one of the big anchor lots), and pedestrians feel like they always have to be on the lookout for those cars (esp if you have kids). Its not good.

To me, it would have made more sense to mimic something like Downtown Disney (or the La Cantera San Antonio outdoor mall I posted earlier). Meaning the actual mall part is sorta enclosed inside of its own parameter & parking is done all along the outside parameter, with alleys & breezeways cutting through to connect the parking lots to the mall. You can't do that with SJTC because of its sprawling, car-centric nature. It just cant be done because it was never designed that way.

So to me, they can retrofit any parking structure over top of it they want, its still gonna blow.

[peestandingup]

Wow, did I say "to me" enough in that last post??