Excape The Bland...Designing Micro Centers

excerpt from Retail Trends

Main Street USA

For horizontal mixed-use projects, architects say the most frequent failing is creating a development that feels bland to the customer. Mixed-use projects are expected to recreate the town square setting found in downtowns of the past, but many architects don't look closely enough at what made those settings work, according to John R. Clifford, principal of GreenbergFarrow, a national firm offering architecture, engineering and development services.

“They are trying to recreate the Main Street of Disneyland, this artificial idea of what a Main Street looks like,” says Jack Illes, managing partner of Urban Labs, a Del Mar, Calif.-based urban design and architecture firm specializing in mixed-use retail and residential projects. “You can show up anywhere in the country and you'll find the same kind of place, with the same tenants and after a while, it's going to feel as tired as the mall because it's not unique.”

This is a costly mistake, because horizontal mixed-use projects, where buildings are spread out over many small buildings, bring some added expenses to the mix. Four-sided construction tends to cost 10 percent to 15 percent more than the three-sided approach commonly used with single-use retail properties, says Jack O'Brien, president of Dallas, Texas-based architecture firm O'Brien & Associates.

To break monotony, allowing retailers to pursue their own design visions can help make the place unique, according to Illes. He brings up the example of General Growth Properties' Otay Ranch Town Center, a recently opened lifestyle property in Chula Vista, Calif.
General Growth let each retailer design its own storefront, resulting in details as varied as limestone pillars and striped awnings to stonework and a sunset yellow color scheme for the local Barnes & Noble.

The quality of the materials, however, has to be consistent throughout the development, says Stan Laegreid, principal of Seattle, Wash-based Callison Architecture. A community for the mid-market consumer should not have elements of luxury to avoid confusing customers.

A common mistake architects have made with some of the first horizontal mixed-use projects has been to bury the retail deep inside the project's residential components. The retail and residential should play off each other, but retail also needs to pull from a wider trade area, says Greg Lyon, partner with KTGY Group, Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based planning and architecture firm. “They need traffic that extends beyond that community,” he says.

When adding entertainment to the mix, designers also need to think about the hours of operation for theaters and restaurants. “A live theater isn't necessarily used 365 days a year and even if it is, it's typically only from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.,” says Illes. “What happens the rest of the day? You've got a bunch of doors leading to an empty, dark place and that can kill traffic.” And location is important as well. Otherwise, residents may have to deal with noise every night.

To make the projects interesting to explore, architects and planners should vary the width and length of streets within the development, the style and height of various buildings, the size of public area spaces and the distribution of architectural features such as fountains and clock towers.

“Real cities were built over time by different architects and different landlords,” says Clifford. “They have modern structures on the side of Neoclassical ones, with Victorian architecture nearby.”

Spacing is also an important consideration, says Alex Espinoza, design principal in the retail/commercial studio of Dorsky Hodgson Parrish Yue, a Cleveland, Ohio-based architecture firm. When buildings are too close together, people feel uneasy, but putting them too far apart disorients visitors, Espinoza says.

The configuration and placement of parking lots is one of the greatest challenges in mixed-use development. Most experts say that parking in horizontal projects should be segregated by use, with separate lots set aside for residents, retail customers and office workers. These lots have to be connected to their respective uses by convenient pedestrian links and should be within close walking distance for the center's customers, says Michael Alston, of Development Design Group, a Baltimore, Md.-based planning, architecture and design firm. In vertical projects, which tend to use structured parking, segregation is even more critical — the condominium owners don't want to come home a week before Christmas and find that their spaces have been taken by shoppers, says Lyon. He recommends creating separate entrances for residents and office workers from the retail portion of the project.

Vertically challenged

In vertical mixed-use projects national retail tenants with good credit are vital for securing financing, but they have set store prototypes and prefer wide, open spaces with great ceiling height. That is difficult to achieve when there are all kinds of mechanical and plumbing systems coming down from the apartments above, says Simon Sykes, vice president with Development Design Group. One solution is to position these systems horizontally, along the ceiling, instead of vertically, when they come to the first floor. O'Brien recommends creating a 2- to 4-foot tall interstitial space between the retail level and the apartments above for sewer pipes as a way to avoid multiple penetrations of the podium slab above retail.

In vertical mixed-use, structured parking can account for up to 15 percent of the entire project cost, while not producing any revenue, says Laegreid.

Another issue to tackle is how the retailers can load and unload merchandise without disturbing residents. A loading dock can be installed in the back of the building or on the ground floor or basement level, with an elevator delivering the goods to the retailer's main floor. This requires a delicate balancing act — elevators and servicing areas often translate into inefficient space and lost revenue, resulting in up to 15 percent of additional expense, says Laegreid.

Getting the message out

The architect also has to make sure that the retail component is the most eye-catching of all in a mixed-use property, says Jeff Green, owner of Jeff Green Partners, a Mill Valley, Calif.-based retail consulting firm. In such a dense environment, visitors' eyes tend to wander and if the storefronts don't jump out at them, the retailers are likely to suffer. O'Brien recommends using different construction materials to set retail apartfrom residential and office.

Considering what kind of tenants go well with a mixed-use building is also an important decision. Restaurants, for example, are a risk for vertical mixed-use projects because in addition to the smell and noise that might bother residents, they can draw rats and mice that could eventually scurry up and infest residential units.

“That's new information to many people in the suburban hinterland; it isn't necessarily self-evident,” says Illes. To prevent a disaster, developers need to make sure that the market in which their mixed-use property is going to be located can support each use on its own. They have to educate themselves on what makes mixed-use work and adequately explain their vision to the architect, says Illes.

“If you hire different architecture firms for each use, you've got one team trying to solve all of their problems and another team concentrating on what they need,” says Brian Church, of Urban Labs.

“We've tried that in some cases, but it's really difficult,” Church says.

Return of the Occidental Tourist

excerpts from Seattlest

Yesterday Seattlest broke out of the office at noon, grabbed a Tats'trami and headed to Occidental Square. There's nothing like passing a short hour with a book and a gut bomb in a square... Actually, had a book along, but it was only cover for our real mission which was to watch all the little people go about their little lives and they happily obliged by showing up and staring back at us. What? Just eating a sandwich and reading over here. Nosy freak.

Earlier this week Seattlest got an email from the Project for Public Spaces who'd recently found a post of ours from last fall about the newly renovated Occidental Square, a renovation they had a hand in. They wondered if we had any updates to our first reactions. A bunch of trees were removed during the park's renovation--seventeen of them, exactly--which, in light of the P-I's article on Monday about the declining fortunes of the tree in Seattle, is pretty tragic.

Generally we're not in favor of the removal of urban trees, but it did help the square. Yesterday the sun came out just as we were arriving and it was leafy and bright at the same time. We had our book and the Tats'trami and when the couple at the table next to us started speaking Polish we thought for just a second that we might be back in the greatest square on the face of the Earth. But no.

It's not really the square's fault, though. You can mess with the leafy to sunny ratio for ever, but you're not going to change the fact that the businesses that surround the square are designed to be used once a month. If there were a few boutiques that opened directly into Occidental Square and maybe another cafe or four there would be a reason for people to meander around on a lunch hour. As things stand, it still seems like a really nice square that most people haul ass through en route to catching the first pitch. We're going head back for some more lunches, though, and maybe we'll grab a few coworkers on the way next time. It should be the best spot in or near Downtown for people watching and we're going to start doing our part by showing up.

Can new architecture create successful places?

by Kathy Madden

People often ask me if a building has to be old or look historic to create a sense of place. I always answer with a definite "No!" While it may be easier to find older buildings where public activity flourishes, their success is not due to age or a particular architectural style. The main factor is actually how the base of the building is treated. A building with a well-designed (and well-managed!) ground floor can be a great place regardless of the style in which it is constructed. Let's look at two places which I think illustrate this point quite effectively: Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, and Rockefeller Center in New York.

Country Club Plaza, which debuted in the 1920s, is one of the nation's oldest shopping centers. Built in a style that mimics the architecture of Seville, Spain, it succeeds as a pedestrian district even though it was developed to accommodate cars. A few years ago PPS interviewed the managers of the complex, and we found that they attributed their success to four things. One, they offered a mix of attractions that appeal to a broad array of people – for example, by varying the price ranges of retail and restaurants. Second, they located necessities (e.g. bank branches, or doctors' and dentists' offices) in places that would lead people to pass by retail stores en route. Third, everything in the development allowed people to interact with it in some way. Children could touch sculptures; people could sit by pools and fountains; window displays were designed to maximize intrigue; outdoor cafes hosted jazz performers and other entertainment. And last, but certainly not least, blank walls were not allowed anywhere. Where management identified sterile areas around the exterior of the complex, they added plantings or artwork to liven the space up for passersby. What's remarkable is that, even though the Plaza is widely known for its historicist aesthetic, the people who run it cite very different reasons for its enduring popularity.

Rockefeller Center, though it was constructed just a short time after Country Club Plaza, couldn't look more different--but it is an even better public space. Its soaring forms are modernist icons, and the closer you get, the more these buildings come alive. Art deco sculptures grace the entrances. Ground floor windows protrude slightly from facades, enticing people to slow down and take a look at the goods inside. Changing exhibits and events in the center of the complex keep it humming in every season, while artfully placed wooden benches enable people to pause, rest, reflect, and take it all in. Here, a modern aesthetic gracefully accommodates a great public space.

Contrast the original Rockefeller Center with the more recently developed Rockefeller Center West (built in the 1970s on the west side of Sixth Avenue), however, and you'll see a very different way of building which has no sense of place. The buildings here do not have human-scaled bases: Store windows and entrances are set back from the sidewalk by nearly 50 feet, and the space between the building and the curb is basically empty. The retail is hidden so few people go window shopping. There is no reason for people to linger or make a return visit.

Rockefeller Center and Country Club Plaza make it clear that success as a public space is independent from architectural style. But as Rockefeller Center West illustrates, newer buildings often fall short of the mark. This is also true regardless of style. In fact, many of the worst new buildings are those designed to look old or historic, which don't work because they hide their ground floor uses behind a "charming" facade.

So although great new buildings may be few and far between, I stand behind my emphatic "No" -- there is NO reason new architecture can't contribute to an enhanced sense of place in the public realm. I would love to hear from readers of this blog about new buildings that succeed at their base--that engage the sidewalk with transparent ground floors and a mix of retail and other uses. What new architecture is striving to create better places?

Sustainable Bags: "Freitag"

what: the Freitag bag, a Swiss-made carryall manufactured entirely from recycled materials. Invented by Swiss brothers Daniel and Markus Freitag, who wanted bags just like the ones used by New York bike couriers (bags that were practical, weatherproof, quick and easy to use), the Freitag bag is an urban tool, a saddlebag for the city, durable enough to be carried all over the world. Very attractive to a visually-trained eye, it’s a pleasant surprise in a world of standardised, mass-produced everyday objects.

who: Markus and Daniel Freitag — also known as the Freitag brothers — were heavily influenced by the motorway. Living in an apartment near a highway in Switzerland, they had easy access to watching the trucks rolling by, covered in thick tarpaulin. In 1993, the DoItYourself duo began to create one-of-a-kind bags made of recycled waterproof tarps, bicycle inner tubes and seatbelts. Before long they were trucking; the company outgrew the brothers’ apartment and moved to its own space in Zurich. Freitag opened flagship stores in Davos, Switzerland, and in Hamburg, Germany. Perhaps more importantly, it established an international presence online. The website allows online hipsters around the world to shop, create custom bags, learn more about the company, play branded games, and even apply for jobs.

sustainability features: the Freitag bag is tailor-made on a small-scale, of recycled materials. Made entirely by hand, the unpretentious Freitag bag has distanced itself from trendy, brand-driven products as a durable and radical ‘anti-brand’ alternative for youthful urbanites who have made it their choice for toting personal necessities. In addition to covering the history of the bag and its particular ecological, economic, and socio-cultural contexts, Freitag.com contains portraits of 3,000 Freitag bags and their owners, most of whom are members of a generation that is as vain as it is critical of consumerism -a generation for whom the Freitag bag is the ideal brand-name product.