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We already have community, food truck meetups, concerts, playgrounds, shops and restaurants, etcetera in downtown Sacramento. One thing downtown doesn't have is a supermarket, at least one east of 16th Street, so you can skip all that other stuff and just get a grocery store in here. Preferably not a "Whole Paycheck."
Some folks seem to think that building new buildings will somehow scare away homeless people, and are somehow spontaneously generated by the presence of old buildings. It doesn't work that way--homeless folks are present because of the economic circumstances of homelessness. They will show up anyhow unless the problem of homelessness is addressed, no matter how far away the social services are. Ever been to the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica? It is one of the few successful examples of an "urban mall" (although Santa Monica is a suburb, not an urban core) and they get a whole lot of street people--the main difference is that they aren't the only ones there, they are outnumbered by shoppers and downtown Santa Monica residents, so they aren't as obvious.
Teenagers like malls and shopping centers. The only reason there aren't more at Pavilions and the Galleria is because it's too far of a drive.
As long as we get stuck in the mentality that K Street somehow has to be a mall, and can never be anything but a mall, it's not going to change, and it's not going to work. K Street has never worked the way a suburban mall does.
Reston Town Center is another "lifestyle center" in a town a tenth the size of Sacramento--a little dinky exoburb of Washington DC. It's about 20 miles from DC proper--in other words, the same distance the Pavilions in Roseville is from downtown Sacramento. It sounds more like El Dorado Hills Town Center--definitely not something worthy of the heart of a city!
People get so stuck in this idea that K Street just has to be a suburban mall, that the only way to bring people here is to turn what should be a city space into a suburban shopping center. It has failed over and over again for over 40 years and will continue to fail until they get the message that it doesn't work!
We already have community, food truck meetups, concerts, playgrounds, shops and restaurants, etcetera in downtown Sacramento. One thing downtown doesn't have is a supermarket, at least one east of 16th Street, so you can skip all that other stuff and just get a grocery store in here. Preferably not a "Whole Paycheck."
Some folks seem to think that building new buildings will somehow scare away homeless people, and are somehow spontaneously generated by the presence of old buildings. It doesn't work that way--homeless folks are present because of the economic circumstances of homelessness. They will show up anyhow unless the problem of homelessness is addressed, no matter how far away the social services are. Ever been to the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica? It is one of the few successful examples of an "urban mall" (although Santa Monica is a suburb, not an urban core) and they get a whole lot of street people--the main difference is that they aren't the only ones there, they are outnumbered by shoppers and downtown Santa Monica residents, so they aren't as obvious.
Teenagers like malls and shopping centers. The only reason there aren't more at Pavilions and the Galleria is because it's too far of a drive.
As long as we get stuck in the mentality that K Street somehow has to be a mall, and can never be anything but a mall, it's not going to change, and it's not going to work. K Street has never worked the way a suburban mall does.
Neither Easton nor Reston Town Center are traditional suburban shopping malls. Both add other elements to the mix, including dedicated large entertainment areas, family gathering spots and higher density residential areas.
Neither Easton nor Reston Town Center are traditional suburban shopping malls. Both add other elements to the mix, including dedicated large entertainment areas, family gathering spots and higher density residential areas.
So they're a new-school interpretation of suburban shopping malls, which makes them suburban shopping malls, just the latest prototype. Neither are located anywhere near to the heart of their urban areas, nor would they belong there.
While I still like the idea of a Fountians-like multi-use community center, I have yet to hear what your solution is wburg. So far you've just poo-poo'd everyone's comments without really contributing to the solution (unless I missed it somewhere). What would you do with the area?
Last edited by icametodropbombs; 08-23-2012 at 10:40 AM..
Sacramento is dreadfully under-toured--we actually agree on this point. My question was intended to ask, how do we get people past the dreaded I-5 barrier? Sacramento's most interesting spots, from a visitor perspective, are Old Sacramento and Midtown--but it's hard to drag people through Downtown, which for the most part closes at night. Some kind of high-profile attraction might be a solution (and arenas generally don't work for that purpose) while a Wal-Mart certainly wouldn't draw tourists! Something unique and interesting would do the trick--so like Ripley's Believe it Or Not Museum, but notspecifically Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, if you get my drift. The nightlife-oriented direction downtown is taking seems like a step on the right path--it is already drawing more downtown visitors than Second Saturday did at its peak.
I suppose it only hurts things when the Convention & Visitors Bureau actively wants to discourage night-time businesses...
The reason I was suggesting some of the tourist destination chains like the Rainforest Cafe and/or Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum is that they are pretty successful about expanding the size of a tourist zone. They tend to go into the fringe of an existing tourist oriented place and then spend a lot of money to redirect the the tourists to where they are located. These are the types of places most parents don't necessarily seek out but the kids really drag them into going. The ads that these retailers place on Taxis and in the displays that they place in the lobbies of hotels are stuff that kids do notice and tend to pester there parents into dragging them into. Additionally the foot traffic, especially the type of foot traffic, they generate tends to help create demand for street performers, which in turn tends to bring more foot traffic to the area.
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Originally Posted by NewToCA
Columbus, Ohio has something similar to The Fountains not too far from their downtown core. The concept might actually be a good evolution of Downtown Plaza, and if done correctly could be a good link between Old Sacramento and Midtown. It is a lot larger than The Fountains but somewhat of a similar concept, except it is more entertainment oriented.
The more I think about it, they could use quite a bit of the existing Westfield's structure and integrate it into a destination center. I'd rather do this than continue to wait for the development of the Railyards.
If and when it ever gets built out, I think the railyards is probably going to end up looking something like the Easton Town Center. They have already inked a deal with Bass Pro Shops. Personally, I think they should redirect the big box retail toward Arden Fair or Natomas, but they are bringing it to the railyards and as a consequence I suspect that the railyards is going to be some type of urban/mall hybrid like the Easton Town Center.
Wburg the reason people are suggesting ways to revamp the K Street Mall as a Mall is first that is the existing land use for the land right now. If the existing K-Street Mall was bulldozed something else could be put in its place probably more urban in character, but that would be fairly expensive because you probably have to buy out the leases of the existing remaining tenants in the mall as well as the cost of demolition and reconstruction of new buildings on the site. But as you pointed out the city doesn't have the money right now to subsidize that type of endeavor and the real estate market in the region while improving is still fairly weak and probably isn't strong enough to pay for the full cost of new construction on new buildings.
So to me the question is what types of incremental change can you pull off to evolve the K-Street Mall into that better utilizes the existing infrastructure and fills the empty store fronts? As I look at downtown, one of the major competitive advantages that downtown has that Roseville or Folsom don't and probably never will have is an ability to bring in tourists from out of the area. Roseville doesn't have the State Capitol, the Railroad Museum, the Crocker, the Convention Center or even Old Town Sacramento. At some point, whether you like them or not I think retail like the Rainforest Cafe and Ripley's Believe it or not Museum's are going to show up somewhere downtown and I think the existing K Street Mall is probably one of the better places to direct that type of retail. These places don't need historic buildings to succeed. But you need a critical mass of them to create a pedestrian tourist strip that leads to and from the State Capitol to Old Town. These type of tourist/regular hybrid retail malls have succeeded in urban areas, I am thinking of Horton Plaza in San Diego and the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. You will find stores like Macy's in pretty close proximity to tourist orientated retail in both of these areas and both feed off each other.
More significantly tourist related retail isn't trying to steal market share from the existing malls as much as it is creating an entirely new category in the region. For this type of market you aren't competing against Roseville and Folsom as much as San Francisco and Monterey.
Wburg the reason people are suggesting ways to revamp the K Street Mall as a Mall is first that is the existing land use for the land right now. If the existing K-Street Mall was bulldozed something else could be put in its place probably more urban in character, but that would be fairly expensive because you probably have to buy out the leases of the existing remaining tenants in the mall as well as the cost of demolition and reconstruction of new buildings on the site. But as you pointed out the city doesn't have the money right now to subsidize that type of endeavor and the real estate market in the region while improving is still fairly weak and probably isn't strong enough to pay for the full cost of new construction on new buildings.
So to me the question is what types of incremental change can you pull off to evolve the K-Street Mall into that better utilizes the existing infrastructure and fills the empty store fronts? As I look at downtown, one of the major competitive advantages that downtown has that Roseville or Folsom don't and probably never will have is an ability to bring in tourists from out of the area. Roseville doesn't have the State Capitol, the Railroad Museum, the Crocker, the Convention Center or even Old Town Sacramento. At some point, whether you like them or not I think retail like the Rainforest Cafe and Ripley's Believe it or not Museum's are going to show up somewhere downtown and I think the existing K Street Mall is probably one of the better places to direct that type of retail. These places don't need historic buildings to succeed. But you need a critical mass of them to create a pedestrian tourist strip that leads to and from the State Capitol to Old Town. These type of tourist/regular hybrid retail malls have succeeded in urban areas, I am thinking of Horton Plaza in San Diego and the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. You will find stores like Macy's in pretty close proximity to tourist orientated retail in both of these areas and both feed off each other.
More significantly tourist related retail isn't trying to steal market share from the existing malls as much as it is creating an entirely new category in the region. For this type of market you aren't competing against Roseville and Folsom as much as San Francisco and Monterey.
I'm not familiar with Horton Plaza, but if you look at Santa Monica's 3rd St Promenade along with the new mall they built at the southern end, it is actually quite a bit like the main street at Easton. What Easton adds to this is an enclosed area of about 250,000-400,000 sq ft that also served as an entertainment complex.
What were they doing in the entertainment complex?
Because I also wondered about just adding more pop up retail to fill spaces. Sort of like how downtown has a seasonal ice rink but add other seasonal land uses in empty buildings to just keep them occupied so maybe have a Haunted House in a vacant spot for Halloween, maybe bring in short term leases with a place selling Christmas stuff, at Christmas, maybe set up a temporary roller skating rink during the summer time. Just stuff to fill empty spaces and bring traffic to the existing tenants.
While I still like the idea of a Fountians-like multi-use community center, I have yet to hear what your solution is wburg. So far you've just poo-poo'd everyone's comments without really contributing to the solution (unless I missed it somewhere). What would you do with the area?
A mixed-use neighborhood--residential upstairs, with commercial on the ground floor. In some cases the existing buildings could be modified to serve this purpose--in others, it would probably require new construction.
The idea of a mall itself is flawed, and has been since the mall was first put into place over 40 years ago. Each time, they used whatever concept was the current rage for suburban malls--first an open-air plaza with parking lots around it, then a semi-enclosed mall with expanded underground parking. Each time it failed--because suburban malls in urban cores simply don't work!
What does work? You don't have to look any farther than the next neighborhood over. A mixed-use neighborhood with residents across the income spectrum, in relatively high density, and a mixture of daytime and evening uses--shopping, entertainment, restaurants, but closely intermixed with residential and office uses. The neighborhood never goes totally dead (except late at night) because it has uses during more than one period of the day. Nor does it ever get ceded entirely to panhandlers, because there are full-time residents who actively try to make the neighborhood safer--through their own efforts or by calling to the city for assistance.
In the short term, a grocery store would be a good use for an existing space--or, better yet, a full-time farmer's market (year round and daily, not once a week) in one of the central plaza spaces. Include vendors for products other than fruit and vegetables, or a small grocery carrying non-perishable items to complement the fresh items in the farmer's market.
The other short-term use is promoting evening activity (currently the mall closes at around 8-9 PM) via nightclubs and restaurants, live music venues and other evening activities. Evening foot traffic will encourage retail stores to stay open later, giving more reason for pedestrian activity.
Security is necessary to limit problems in a situation like this, and are a necessary component of nightlife venues--both in the venues and patrolling the neighborhood. They would also serve to dissuade aggressive panhandlers. You'll still get panhandlers--they go where there are groups of people, and the only way to avoid having panhandlers enter a public space entirely is to ensure that nobody goes there for any reason, thus denying the panhandler access to their customers. But it's not worth total surrender of the public realm simply to ensure that nobody ever gets panhandled!
So, basically, like Midtown, but in a downtown setting, you can go bigger--higher density housing, bigger venues, later hours, more diversity of retail--along with commercial settings, because new companies (not necessarily Fortune 500 companies, but hungry startups and tomorrow's giants) value locations with close proximity to all of those uses--especially if they also have opportunities for their workers to live nearby.
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