Walkable Retail in Suburban Locations, Part 2
Yesterday I blogged Seattle’s updated Northgate Mall. Today we head East to University Village, long known as U-Village.
Like Northgate Mall, University Village dates to the 1950s. Unlike Northgate Mall, U-Village has remained an open air shopping center since opening in 1956 (view aerial) .
This shopping center is just East of the University of Washington. Although it is very auto-friendly it is also pedestrian friendly. Students & others have the choice of this center or a more traditional gridded area on the West side of campus at The Ave.
Most of the buildings are original but remodeled to the point they look different than they did decades ago.
Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza came to mind as I was here, although I prefer the grid and public streets at the Plaza.
Above, this area with storefronts facing each other has existed since opening. Such spaces often became the basis for an enclosed mall.
New structures have been woven throughout, helping break up the parking.
Bike racks are numerous and highly visible. Pedestrians were everywhere as are signs to remind motorists.
Nice details give folks a pleasant place to sit and chat. U Village succeeds where Northgate Mall fails.
Outside my mecca, the Apple Store, a woman walks her dog.
More Information:
Right now U Village is not mixed use but that may change:
City to review car impacts from U. Village QFC projectA project to add 31,000 square feet of new retail space and 350 residences around the University Village QFC grocery story would likely have a significant impact on traffic and parking in the area, Seattle planners have determined.
The city has called for an environmental impact statement, which would include a detailed examination of such issues and how they could be addressed. While planners have preliminarily identified traffic and parking as significant issues, they will host a March 16 to allow people to comment on which issues should be part of the review. (source)
Parking is not excessive by typical suburban standards. Hopefully they will be able to add residential to the site.
Two thoughts. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – if it’s continuing to work well for retail, why push to add residential (or other mixed uses)? And the aerial site photo is very informative about parking – it looks like the parking is sized to meet the center’s “everyday” needs, not those of “Black Friday” (like most typical suburban shopping centers). With both the parking and the sidewalks “comfortably full”, the center seems much more “alive”, compared to most malls these days, with spookily empty parking parking lots and desolate corridors . . .
If the residential component could TRULY be largely served by U. Village thereby feeding critical pedestrian-accessible commerce and sustenance, and the through-streets seen on the aerial photo actually connect to real streets in a meaningful way, then a residential component could be included. This, apart from many new mixed-use centers and other new retail developments around the country, seems to demonstrate that a form (now adopted and usually poorly emulated by municipalities and real estate developers as ‘lifestyle centers’) has apparently proven it’s worth through its endurance. Obviously, the photos display only newly constructed buildings but the blog post reports that the FORM has been in existence at U. Village since the middle 1950s, and that’s the important lesson to be learned.
(I was sort of hoping that Kara would chime in here…)
Just back from a road trip, where I had a chance to see both the new Pinnacle Hills Promenade in Rogers, Arkansas and Branson’s new Branson Landing, both of which are typical, new lifestyle centers. PHP is much in the mold of this center, only it adds both a sea of additional parking and several big boxes to the small-scale, walkable, retail core (that seems to be both well done and pretty successful). Branson Landing is actually much closer to real mixed use, with both hotels and condos above the ground-floor retail component, and the parking seems to be surprisingly limited. Unfortunately, as new as they are, I can’t locate up-to-date aerial photos of either site.
.
http://pinnaclehillspromenade.com/html/storedirectory.asp
.
http://www.bransonlanding.com/landingmap.html
.
My big concern, with all things retail, is the long-term viability of both the overall concept and the individual properties. Will they do well for ten years or so, then fade away (see Union Station or St. Louis Centre, here), or will they continue to reinvent themselves and continue to do well, blessed with ideal locations (like U Village or Mall St. Matthews in Louisville, KY or Country Club Plaza in KC)? While I was poking around Rogers, I found their original enclosed mall – it’s major anchor is now a Hobby Lobby and I had no interest in looking inside the enclosed mall itself . . .
If located in or on actively connected streets, as opposed to the new buildings encircling fake, Disneyland ‘streets’ on the interior of the development, like some insular fortress of EIFS clad cheese, then there might be little need for reinvention of purpose. The success is really invested in the residential component of the mixed-uses, and if a resident could conceivably live in such a planned neighborhood (at the pocket scale) and not need the use of a car for a few days, either by availability and proximity to mass transit or to life’s necessities, then it should succeed.
I live only a ten- or fifteen-minute drive to both Northpark Mall and University Village. While both of them have become retail meccas, I typically never go to either of them unless its for a specific store (such as Crate and Barrell). Otherwise, there’s no reason…it’s so much more appealing to shop in downtown Seattle.
While Steve and I were at U-Village, he asked a rhetorical question of why I believed it didn’t merit the same credit I give to the Plaza in Kansas City. I still don’t entirely know the answer to that. The Plaza has such incredible old architecture, and as one previous comment already stated, U-Village has the feel of a fake Disney street, with glued-on facades prototypical to each chain store (although some of the storefronts do have some true design merit). I’ll take it any day over a typical mall, but for some reason I just don’t “believe” U-Village as a true civic and retail space.
Hilldale Shopping Center in Madison, Wisconsin is a smaller version of U. Village, with fake street and Sundance Movie theater. These shopping centers (not fully mixed use, and without any meaningful connection to any other civic component) are like stillborn versions of what planners have been preaching about, because the developers still have one foot in the conventional mall mode (on-site containment) and only making nominal gestures toward proper connectivity to neighborhoods and civic life.
Another alternative, but not as currently PC, are walkable resdiential neighborhoods adjacent to walkable retail strips, typical of many St. Louis neighborhoods, as well as many other older urban cities. Not everyone wants to live “above the store”/”in the middle of the action”, and the TOD ideals of a 1/4 mile walk works well for these situations. Plus, reusing (or recreating, as in New Town) the old corner groceries for similar uses or for restaurants offers much of the same appeal as many mixed-use developments. Part of what makes U Village successful (besides the U) are the neighborhoods to the north and east.
…which is why that sort of approach (mostly if not exclusively retail) could really work in the nearly vacant Deer Creek shopping center. The surrounding neighborhood fabric already exists, and there is a clear opportunity for a developed street that has meaningful connection at each end.