Suburban "Downtown"

They are showing up on the suburban landscape like Courtney Love at a Comedy Central Roast. They are incoherent, awkward looking, and shockingly funny more from the embarrassment at having to see them try to speak, then from any actual talent . What are they? The “Towne Centers” and other “Olde Fashioned” planned mixed use open air retail residential shopping centers. They are the ugly strip mall made “pretty”. They are the weakest attempt to recreate the almost lost “downtowne” experience yet.

Now that Wal-Mart has gutted the downtown areas of the United Estates at America; some developer somewhere started missing the experience and decided to “recreate” it.... and they missed by a million miles.

The one thing that makes a city core special and old timey (should it have been lucky enough to survive the suburban planners), is that the buildings were all built by different people (or companies), at different times. You can look at storefronts not designed by some cookie cutter developer who made sure they all look exactly the same. They have different roof pitches, and gables, they have unique shapes and front display windows. They are warm and inviting places full of life.... and people. (Left and Below; Church Street businesses, I had to wait for people to clear before snapping photos)

Here in Northwest Vermont we have some great examples to draw upon; one suburban “towne center” in the suburbs, one suburban type “towne center” in the center of a town, and one solid downtown shopping area that has not been gutted by Wal-Mart.

Today I visited all three within the same hour of the same day to take a comparative look at the life these places attract between two and three thirty on warm sunny fall Monday. The selected sites are all within twenty minutes of my apartment (which is located a block from the Church Street Marketplace). The first location I visited is called “Maple Tree Center” and is located at Taft's Corner in Williston, Vermont; it is a suburb located “towne center”. The second location is downtown Winooski, Vermont and the new mixed use retail/apartment/condo redevelopment project. The project has been opened for well over a year and while the apartments enjoy very high occupancy rates there is only one retail tenant; a Chinese Restaurant. The rest of the storefronts are empty. The last place I went was home; The Church Street Marketplace occupying five blocks on a pedestrian mall. The buildings in the marketplace were not part of some “planned community” and were all built at different times, by different people, for different purposes.

If you look at the pictures you will notice the biggest difference between the “planned developments” and the genuine downtown area is that there are actually people using the genuine downtown area. The other photographs are completely devoid of any human activity except driving. (Right: No people @Maple Tree)

The “towne centers” are not especially unpleasant places, Maple Tree has a faux town square complete with benches and trees with pretty leaves changing color. The landscape of course is quite immature, but it is not like the exercise yard in a prison either. But the stores are pretty much generic suburban shops, like Best Buy, New Balance and the Christmas Tree Shoppe. It is almost completely unaccessible to easy pedestrian access, but once you drive there you can park in one of the huge black parking “lagoons” that surround the place  like a hard moat. On November 2^nd in the early afternoon the entire place was completely devoid of human life. There was one lady going into a cell phone shop, but I snapped the picture a half second too late to have any photographic proof.

The Winooski Falls downtown redevelopment project is a sure miss. The shop windows are empty and would be no more inviting if they weren't. Even the developers website cannot come up with people to photograph enjoying the “public space” next to the waterfall http://www.winooskifalls.com . The street looks like the North side of Chicago gone wrong, and the empty shops don't help. (Photo Left)

What developers seem to do best in this country is what all corporations do to a good idea. They improve upon it until they ruin it. This is exactly what happened to the famed disco, Studio 54. The real 54 was the brainchild of Steve Rubell, and was a place where a plumber could snort coke with a princess until dawn, it was a place with no rules and no boundaries. It was the great American nightclub, and could never be duplicated by the sterile, safe corporate boobs who took it over in the end. Part of what made the place so special was the availability of drugs other than alcohol, and the fact that the door was so restrictive. This was a place where the beautiful poor people could rub elbows with the rich and famous, it was a place that is said to have turned away Cher at the door once. Studio 54 in Las Vegas is not even remotely the same. For a start, the employees are all drug tested, sober, and on camera all the time, the drinks are metered, and there is no line at the door. The rich and famous have no desire to rub elbows with the all you can eat buffet crowd, and you never see pictures of European Royals and Hollywood Stars lining up, and being selected to get in just like everyone else. You can find pictures of both clubs on line, the first big difference you will see is that the giant crescent moon with a face suspended over the dance floor is missing it's coke spoon at the new “improved” Las Vegas imitation 54. They did what all corporations do, they made it safe for mass consumption, then sold it to everyone.

Nightclubs aren't the only thing corporations have screwed up; the casinos themselves changed forever “after the mob got knocked out of the racket”, according to Lefty Rosenthal of the Stardust, “time was a dealer knew what you drank, and how you played; now when a high roller comes into the casino some kid asks for his social security number. And if you order room service on Tuesday you are lucky if it shows up the following week.” And don't get me started on Insurance companies, Anthem is to Blue Cross Blue Shield, what the towne centere is to downtown (a piss poor substitute that kinda looks the same, but not really.)  (Pictured Church Street, the genuine article)
You just can't put up a bunch of new building(s) that all look exactly the same and think that it will remotely replicate the charm of a “semi planned” downtown area. You can add all the same elements, you can put in the stores, the nightclubs, the apartments, the hotels... but if you build them all off the same blueprint you just end up with another box.

In order to build a cohesive downtown core, that people will want to visit you have got to start with other people and other ideas. One person (or company) developing six blocks with the same architect and contractors will end up with six blocks that look just alike; devoid of personality, having left humans out of the plan completely. (as downtown Winooski has, left)

Look at the pictures, where would you rather shop? Look at the pictures again.... you weren't the only one!

Towne Centers, what Wall Street wants Main Street to look like... your Suburban Empire.

(Below top Church Street Marketplace, Burlington

Downtown Winooski's abandoned streets, and the faux towne square at Maple Tree, lower right the empty sidewalks at Maple Tree)