Cleveland and Pittsburg do not have downtown pedestrian malls and Cleveland now has zero department stores downtown down from 5 in 1980. Pittsburgh now has two department stores downtown also down from 5 in 1980. Rustbelt cities have gone downhill over the past quarter century, pedestrian malls do not work as has also been proven over the past quarter century. The only think that works is to have more people living there. Retail follows residential.
Washington DC had 2 ,relatively short, ‘two block long’ ‘pedestrian only’ malls in the downtown area.. Both were complete failures. While the rest of downtown was experiencing a building boom, the pedestrian malls stood out as shabby and desolate problem areas. One in particular became a magnet for the homeless and provided opportunity for the criminal element at night. The fountains became public toilets. The city tore out the malls and reconnected the street grid. Today those re-connected blocks are home to restaurants, hotels, the SPY Museum, and condominiums
I've had the honor to talk with one of the finest and most recognized pedestrian planners in America (John LaPlante from TY Lin International in Chicago) about downtown Buffalo's pedestrian mall and what possibly caused it to fail. His explanation, as the article's author touched on, has to do with the width of the road & sidewalks. I don't have exact measurements off the top of my head but it wouldn't surprise me if there were 30-40 feet of sidewalk on each side of the metro-rail. Of course the mall being 1 mile long is rediculously too long, but the fact that it feels like an empty canyon, even if there is a lot of pedestrian action, is the main reason it has failed. This seems to be a major point that people overlook whenever there is an article or discussion dealing with this topic.
I was in Santa Cruz last weekend and they have a great vibrant downtown (I'm not talking about the boardwalk) and it is not a pedestrian mall (they allow one way traffic). Parking was plentiful and $.25 for 1 hour and 45 minutes which makes it easy and encourages people to park and wander. I think it is time to open Main St. to traffic. Downtown Seattle is a thriving downtown and they have no pedestrian malls. Nearby Tacoma has a nice main thoroughfare that has both cars and light rail. One thing I noticed in Tacoma is that all of the parking downtown is free for 1 hour. One of the last times I was in Buffalo, I tried to go to meet a friend downtown and parked in one of the lots- the the parking ticket dispenser was broken (I found out after I had even put in $5). I ran into the restaurant for 1 minute to tell my friend I needed to find another space only to come out and find that in that tiny timeframe I had received a $35 ticket. Way to encourage people to come downtown! I would open up Main St. to traffic and make it very very easy to come down and park (if not for free, then very affordable). Mark 2 blocks of main street off as the more pedestrian friendly area and I bet you see that area take off. I'd concentrate on the blocks near Sheas and the theatre district as there is already some decent development there plus the Hyatt and a youth hostel.
There is nothing about a pedestrian mall that cannot be accomplished on a regular street that is open to automobile traffic. See: Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY.
You know, as much as the stereotype is that Main Street is a wasteland with tumbleweeds blowing through, I was there a couple of weeks ago on a Friday morning at 10am and was impressed by how busy and full of pedestrians the area was - at least as busy as Elmwood. At Lafayette Square there were hot dog vendors on three of the corners and they all seemed to be doing brisk business.
Charlottesville's mall isn't THAT bad.
For some others, check out the Pearl St Mall in Boulder, CO or the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, Vt or even the one in Ithaca.
Living Streets and Car free areas are great. And, Buffalo's isn't that bad and has alot of potential. It is honeslty one of the biggest things i miss from working downtown in lafayette square. There were alot of rundown buildings, but that means there are cheap things to renovate if you want to make a difference.
MAKE A DIFFERENCE, and no, that doesn't mean add auto traffic to main st. that would be a terrible mistake!!! I want to move back, please don't take the car free zone away!
I visit family in Charlottesville at least twice a year over the past 15 years, to say that their downtown mall is anything but a failure is to outright lie. During that time almost all of the retail has left the downtown mall for strip plaza's on route 29. Only one theatre remains down there and it is dilapitated. Many of the storefronts sit empty just as they do in Buffalo's pedestrian mall. They are now in the process of planning to rip up a good section of the mall. You can check the "Daily Progress" web site for update on those plans.
If you are going to put up Charloteesville as an example of the best we can expect from pedestrian malls then that should be evidence enough to enact legislation banning such malls.
Sally, I have to disagree with your opinion on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville. I lived there for four years and visit a couple of times a year. There are a wide variety of stores/restaurants/bars that attract a very eclectic crowd. I'll agree that most of the big box retail is off of 29 but the boutique stores on the mall serve a purpose too. I would hate to think of what Cville would look like without the Downtown Mall anchoring it.
if you look at any of those pedestrian malls they all have one thing in common. mixed use. none of them are just a mall in the middle of nothing. all of them incorporate or are surrounded by residential, office, retail, recreation, ect. main street can work as a pedestrian mall.....but we need life to sprout up around it. which seems to be slowly happening.
Interesting to note that the Palm Tree lined pedestrian mall is really a new lifestyle center>
Many of the examples given are really outdoor shopping malls, ie. Quincy Market. I don't think they have a lot of relevance to Buffalo. Successful pedestrian malls require significant density and buying power. College towns have this, as do major tourist destinations like Boston.
What constitutes a "Lot of people" is relative. Buffalo's transit mall always looks desolate except when there is a special event. As far as transit/pedestrian malls working if there was a larger downtown population, you only need to look at Philadelphia's Chestnut St mall to see that is not necessarily true. Philadelphia's "center city" as they call it has grown to the second or third largest downtown population in the county over the last 20 years. Approx 90,000. Yet Chestnut St ped mall failed.The buildings were shabby. It was a dollar store district. The mall was removed. Traffic was returned. Today the beautiful buldings are being restored and World Class retail is moving in. Nearby Walnut ST., however, which remained auto accessable has always flourished as one of Americas premier downtown shopping districts.
Other ones I don't think have been mentioned are Ithica and Burlington, Vermont. The one in Burlington is really nice, with great restaurants and nice shops. I always like walking around there because there is a ton to see and do.
The City should work even harder to incentivize development on Main Street, and specifically on Main Street - in addition to existing downtown economic development incentives. They should make it so cheap for a local or corporate retailer to locate on Main that they wouldn't even consider the Galleria or elsewhere. If the City were to literally give away the space on Main, in 2-3 years, they would be collecting the taxes that they are currently missing out on. Imagine a Downtown with and abundance of cool clothing stores, eclectice record and book stores, jewelry shops and places to pick up essentials. There are more and more people moving downtown each month, its time the City put a little effort into bringing back the amenities that downtown residnets desire and need.
So, true...Why doesn't Buffalo Place and the city work out a marketing/development plan to get Retail, restaurants, and entertainment venues Downtown? I don't see why we are stuck with first floor offices (blank windows, a parol office, and others) empty window spaces with no signs to promote them as a great business opp, and buildings allowed to rot away right in the heart of our own city core where visitor's to our area have to see it and think, what a dump. Granted, the city is improving in many areas, but I still don't see a push in the city center as we are now just seeing on the Inner Harbor. Why not get Benderson or another developer to just take over Main Street? If these guys are going national to attract the big names in retail to our waterfront, why not do the same for Main Street? It CAN be done.
reflip: WRONG, have you ever been on a living street? while you could have cars on it, it would really ruin the atmosphere of a good one. either that, or allow pedestrians to walk down the middle of the street and make the cars follow behind at that speed, like european/asian cities.
The City should work even harder to incentivize development on Main Street, and specifically on Main Street - in addition to existing downtown economic development incentives. They should make it so cheap for a local or corporate retailer to locate on Main that they wouldn't even consider the Galleria or elsewhere. If the City were to literally give away the space on Main, in 2-3 years, they would be collecting the taxes that they are currently missing out on. Imagine a Downtown with and abundance of cool clothing stores, eclectice record and book stores, jewelry shops and places to pick up essentials. There are more and more people moving downtown each month, its time the City put a little effort into bringing back the amenities that downtown residnets desire and need.
As others have pointed out, people and life are the major factors. And what Vivian said about that especially resonates with me: the only "programming" that I notice taking place are special events - not a lot day-to-day. Newell had an article a few weeks ago calling for day-to-day programming around the Main/Huron intersection, and what struck me then is that there is already an organization (Buffalo Place) that was formed to - among other things - handle "programming" for the pedestrian mall. I think if they were to do more, more often - and more creatively - it could make a huge difference, and I don't understand why they don't. It doesn't necessarily require a huge amount of financial resources.
Let's face it: even if the long-term answer is to re-allow the cars, that will take a long, long time to happen, if the progress of the first phase is any indication. Or, say the answer is [insert silver bullet project here: Bass Pro, AM&A's redevelopment, etc.], that's still years away. Buffalo can't afford to let Main Street remain so much a wasteland in the meantime. Perhaps - like was done for the Commercial Slip redevelopment - a summit meeting/conference in the community could get some fresh ideas on the table for bringing more people and life to Main Street in the short term. The results would spur additional economic development and boost quality of life - and couldn't possibly lead to anything worse than the situation now - so what's to lose--? Maybe the first commenter could get John LaPlante to come from Chicago to be the keynote speaker...
Denver Colorado Pedestrian Mall: Maybe our city leaders should take a visit? Their 16th Street pedestrian mall, the 16th street mall is located in downtown Denver, similar in every way to our own pedestrian mall in downtown Buffalo – Same width, sidewalk size. The lone exception is that Denver utilizes gas powered buses as opposed to light rail for public transportation on the mall. In both cities, vehicle traffic is not permitted, and the entire mall is a fare free zone, meaning of course, that all rides are free. Well…there was one more difference that I noticed between the Denver's ped mall, and our own. People and business! There were people everywhere. I stayed in a hotel on 16th Street, on a Tuesday. I noticed thousands of people on the mall. at 10 am, noon, 2pm, 5pm, and even at 11pm the streets still had hundreds of people of all ages and creed. The free buses were loaded with people at all hours as well. There were businesses lining the 20 blocks from the start of the mall, all the way to the end. Many were restaurants, packed with people. There was an outdoor retail center, loaded with shops, bars and a movie theater, all doing quite well. The reason that I bring this up, is that, as we all know, our leaders within the City of Buffalo would like to spend tens of millions of dollars to remove our own downtown pedestrian mall. There is an unfounded common belief that the mall killed downtown Main St, and downtown Buffalo as a whole. If this were true, wouldn’t downtown Denver, and its mall be in the same shape as ours? My point is, it wasn't, and still isn't our light rail line, or the pedestrian mall that has killed downtown. Wouldn't we be much better served to utilize the millions of dollars planed to tear out our mall, and invest instead, back into downtown, and Main St? Imagine…seed money for building rehabilitation and conversion? Tax credits to make doing business downtown more affordable? Dollars for more police patrols? $50 million can go a long way into the rebuilding of downtown Buffalo! It is arguable as to whether our pedestrian mall is an asset, however, where is the evidence that it is a detriment? The ped malls work in Minneapolis as well. In the 1980s, Denver was a cold, industrial city, much like Buffalo. In the past 20 years, they have reinvented themselves. It's time to do the same in Buffalo. We laid the foundation for that in the 70s, with the beginning of light rail and a pedestrian mall. Isn't now the time to finish what we started, as opposed to trashing it, and starting from scratch? We need to let our "leaders" know what we think. Maybe they should take a discovery trip to Denver and Minneapolis, and see how they made their malls work, before wasting not only the millions it will take to tear ours out, but the hundreds of millions that we spent to put it in.
I would think block after block of empty run down buildings has a lot to do with it along with the shear length then split by the rail. At the moment a lose- lose situation. Very poorly planned from the beginning. When we went to see "wicked" the other night, main street was very sad, yet looking at all the historic buildings the potential is there.
Oops...sorry for the tough read Not sure what happened to my paragraph breaks
I did not say it was totally empty, I said that each time we go there it has fewer and fewer offerings. There is almost no retail left there except for a small toy store, a shoe store and a drug store/soda fountain. It's life has been ebbing away for at least 10 years now. This despite the fact that the mall is literally adjacent to the 17,000 student campus of UVa.
In a four season city like Buffalo, incorporating a pedestrian only street for such a long length was a really questionable decision. It should be retrofitted to permit all modes of transportation particularly in the winter months. This doesn't mean one has to throw the baby out with the bath water; a more manageable portion of Main Street (maybe as an extension of Lafayette Square) could be designed to permit closing it off for events and/or during peak summer months when people really want to get out of their cars to walk to their destination.
I think under such a strategy, retailers and developers could be better enticed to locate along Main Street.
Retail isn't going to come until people are in the CBD 24/7. What came first in Amherst? Retail or the people living there? If we continue to add residential to our cities core.....main street will come alive again.
horseradish,
How am I wrong? OK, ok, there is *one* aspect of a pedestrian mall that cannot be replicated: the absence of cars.
However, the absence of cars is not the goal of a pedestrian mall. A walkable, pedestrian-friendly retail and dining district is the goal of a pedestrian mall. That can be accomplished on a street with cars. See: Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY.
I don't know what a "living street" is, so maybe we're talking about different things.
hamp: there are PLENTY of people downtown walking on those sections of roads during the day for an outdoor mall to work. people just have to invest in the area. people have just allowed it to rot.
Back in the good old Urban Renewal days, pedestrian malls were touted as this idealized new paradigm of urban planning that would create an instant community nexus filled with happy strollers, shoppers, and daydreaming park bench habitues. And what resulted for so many cities was the exact opposite. Remember that just the mere period of construction for these things resulted in rerouted traffic, endless demolition, noise and dust which drove many shops out of business. Then came the poorly designed plazas, sidewalks and transit malls that became windswept habitats for vagrants and homeless folk. With so many emptied out buildings and vacant storefronts, who rode in to fill these sad buildings? Government services agencies. And boy do those places draw the happy crowds. Buffalo's story is a little different, but it ends the same: people avoid these people magnets like the plague. The college town pedestrian mall stories are nice. Boulder Colorado is a good one to share, but in any city whose fortunes are determined by a commercial ethos, pedestrian malls are the kiss of death.
Does anyone know which significant buildings along Main Street are owned by the city? Or what the percentage of city-owned buildings is?
Buffalo's pedestrian mall has been blamed for Main Street's decline, but I think the decline was already happening. I don't know that anyone has the answer to whether removing the pedestrian mall would be beneficial. I would simply suggest allowing cars on Main Street temporarily for a designated period of time. Measure car traffic, foot traffic, sales receipts, outdoor activity, etc. and use the data to plan accordingly. This would be an inexpensive method to provide useful information.
I do think incentives must be provided to get more retailers in the central business district, but most national retailers will still avoid the area because the demographic is too poor. Local businesses, induced with proper incentives, are the key to the area's revival in the short-term.
Elmwood Avenue has nothing on a true living street. If you want to know what it is, type "living street" into wikipedia or google or something. There is a ton of info.
A pedestrian mall and cars just don't mix. That is the definition of a pedestrian mall.
Has anyone considered our terrible climate, 60 mph winds, snow drifts, sideways rain and sleet. Who the hell wants to walk up and down Main St. outside in this crap. It is awful for 6-8 months.
I don't believe that population is a factor, but the fact that Buffalo is the second poorest city in the country means that people are not real materialistic here.....they just want to eat, drink, watch the sabres and die.
How it went down is something we have been debating for years...NOW, let's try and improve Main Street. Who is Promoting this part of town to Retailers right now? Let's focus on that, improve the area and MARKET IT so it can be busy. Right now, Noone markets Main Street unless an event is going on. It should be a place "To Be" everyday instead of just for special events. Get a local or national developer to take over our current Pedestrian Mall and have them MARKET Main Street to national retailers, restaurants, entertainment venues and get this street the action it needs.
I have been to the one in Madison, Wisconsin. The reason that one is so successful is because the university is right there. We were there on a week night and it was busy with college kids mostly, but there were adults walking around. There was a nice art gallery at one end, and everything from starbucks, to fancy sit down restaurants to a cheap college kid hang out. They had a ben and jerry's and bookstores. While walking around we kept commenting on how come this small college town has this busy area with major chains and Buffalo doesn't? We walked around, grabbed an ice cream, people watched, and listend to a street performer. It was like a tiny city all on this one street. Still, the biggest reason I think is tha the school is right there and students actually live on campus and the in the surrounding houses. If UB was downtown something like this could be possible here.
Actually, the Mall is at its best in the winter. With the Christmas lights, Rotary Rink, and the music coming from its sound system Main St. is a great place to be in the winter. If Buffalo Place kept it just a bit more free of snow and there were more stuff to do I would spend much more time there. If retail and restaurants were in closer proximity to each other as the article mentions people wouldn't have to spend much time out in the elements.
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