Revitalization of Towns?

[BigLittleTim]

The pioneers:

My experience has been: If you want to rejuvinate your neighborhood you've got to go get yourself some gay men.

Boston's South End, New York's Chelsea, San Francisco's Castro, Philadelphia's Center City, and Chicago's "Gay Town" (Jeepers!) were all lousy decaying areas until gay men started moving into them in the '70's and '80's, looking for great old houses to restore on a budget. Coffee shops, antique stores, art galleries followed, as well as trendy restaurants that created street traffic, night-life, and a sense of SAFETY. Today, these areas are fashionable and expensive neighborhoods.

If I were a real estate speculator, I'd keep my eye on that part of town where the latest gay bar just opened.

-BigLittleTim

 

[Paisley]

See, the tear-downs being replaced with parking lots (or cold, impersonal modernist architecture) is what helped speed the decline of most downtowns. People tried to make downtown more like the suburbs, with plenty of surface parking, etc. but that just doesn't work. Downtown isn't the suburbs, and shouldn't try to be like the suburbs.

I agree that downtown definitely isn't the suburbs. It has an energy that doesn't exist in rambling office campuses and big box stores in a sea of asphalt. It's great to be able to walk to the library, shopping, the movies, dancing and restaurants. I feel safe here late at night.

As for parking lots, I don't mean acres of asphalt. Denver, for instance, has parking garages in the middle of downtown and small lots just outside. As for cold, modernist architecture ruining the city, I'm writing this from a 54-story building in view of another high rise being built. The commercial rent here is three times what it is in the suburbs. Most of the employees where I work can't take mass transit--they have to go out to clients. Clients, when they come here, park in our garage. I'm sure something had to be torn down for all of these structures to go up.

As I said before, there are nevertheless many historical buildings in downtown Denver--some of the next to high rises. Hey, I even tried to get the partners to move to one of them when we outgrew our office last year. But a pink Beaux Arts building just isn't who we are as a company.

 

[panamag8or]

Atomic glee,

Basically, the same thing happened with Gainesville, FL. Downtown was run-down, and one person came along with a vision. Now, there is a vibrant nightlife scene there, and during the day, it is busy with the local government workers.

I like what Publix (a large regional supermarket) did with their latest store in Columbia, SC. They renovated the old Confederate Printing Plant, which might have been razed otherwise.

 

[Lincsong]

Englewood, the suburb of Denver where I live, started to do this about 10 years ago, and I think they're doing a good job. What was once the largest shopping mall in the world went defunct. It was torn down and government buildings, retail, and condos were built in its place. One of the retailers was a WalMart, which seems to have a booming business here. Another major project was tearing down a large, defunct iron works and putting a transit system repair facility in its place. It really helped that Denver has been booming also, and that Colorado in general has low tax rates. Although housing has become pretty expensive here, it's still cheap compared to much of California, which is where a lot of people come from to live here.

On the other hand, I've read that some other cities are lost causes because there is no nearby industry and tax rates are too high.

It's funny that you mention Englewood and ex-Californians in the same post. In this town there is this scumbag realtor who for years was the cheerleader for higher taxes and regulations. As more and more businesses and decent people left town this dirtbag quietly sold his house (at an over inflated price) and moved his family to Englewood, CO. He left his father's Real Estate Co. and started working for another company in town and would fly in if he was needed otherwise having a cell phone with a 510 area coded, faxing and internet would suffice to run a real estate transaction from 1,000 mile. So we had a school bond on the ballot last November and this jackass took out an ad in favor of the bond with the tag line; "blank Realtors dedicated to the community". So on the ad he had his cell phone number. So I called him up and asked him if he moved back here or if he was still in Colorado. He stuttered a bit as I had his sorry butt pegged, I told him off and then sent a letter to the editor of the newspaper in which the ad ran exposing this rat for the crumb that he is.

 

[Twitch]

Near and dear to me is that school bond thing you speak of. My wife works for the dschool district and let me say that simply they have more than enough money to do what needs to be done but of course they have educators hired at sky high salaries insted of business people.

Anyhow there was a school bond which in So. Cal. was going to impact us who owned houses in the school district. Of course none of the disctrict big shots live there. They live in distant affluent areas so sure they can talk a good game. And the stupid residents didn't even understand how it would hit them in the wallets. It was actually sold as a "temporary" measure. Is 30 years temporary?

So once again out of probably 90,000 residents in the district about 3,000 actually voted where some 1,800 weiners will cause the rest to pay an additional $35 per $100,000 evaluation of your house.

This brought home another good reason to scrutinize any of the goody goody "fix up the city" plans too. These bond measures need to be read in depth to make sure YOU aren't going to pay.

 

[Lincsong]

Over on the San Francisco Peninsula a couple good looking downtown's are in Burlingame, Palo Alto and San Mateo. Winter Park, FL is also a good looking downtown with plenty of Golden Era buildings.

The Wall St. Journal had an article a couple weeks ago about how people in Aspen, CO are complaining that their downtown is too upscale!!! Heck, I'll trade downtown Aspen, CO for any number of downtowns across the country.lol

 

[Mid-fogey]

Towns and Cities...

...are system of system solutions to specific human needs that reflect level of technology and environment.

Revitalization efforts fail when they dictate the answer and don't address the question "why".

When the bygone towns and cities people yearn for were built, they were not generally designed or planned except in a street/grid type of way. They evolved to solve transportation, communication, and distribution problems of the day. Changing technologies often rendered that particular solution obsolete.

When revitalization efforts work, they are finding a new "why" that fits the existing infrastructure. It's no surprise the private ventures usually work better -- the people driving them keep asking themselves "why"?

Remember that pre-suburban cities had fairly low crime because, often, the Police were very aggressive and proprietary of the areas they patrolled. They thought nothing of telling a person to leave a neighborhood they didn't look like they belonged in.

There are a million "what ifs" that might have preserved more downtowns. Here are just a few:

• What if the criminal conspiracy (proved in court) of GM and others that deliberately destroyed street car systems all over America and replaced them with busses hadn't happened?

• 
  What if in the 1950s, building of the interstate transportation system had been replaced with an integrated transportation system that was designed to bring road, rail, air, and water transportation into a seamless network designed to maximize the balance between cost and speed?

• What if there had been no GI home loan program to fuel the initial post-WWII housing boom?

Technology would still have advanced, but perhaps in a method that would have preserved more viable town and city life.

 

[Ecuador Jim]

It's clear that any revitalization effort requires an integrated plan, with tax incentives, code "encouragement" and commitment by both the government and the community.

Several cities have successfully renewed their downtown cores. Just a few that come to mind are San Diego, Pasadena, Fort Worth, Denver, Seattle and Portland. Not all of these places were successful in the short term. There were arguments, restarts and probably some bonfires. For awhile, it looked like Detroit was going to be a real success story, then it appeared that the energy sagged.

Keeping the vision strong seems to be a key to a successful redevelopment.