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June 29, 2007

Pike Place Market, Seattle

Pike Place Market - most successful in the U.S.

Why is that Seattle's grungy Pike Place Market is celebrating its 100 year anniversary as the longest running public market in the U.S., while the beautiful new Portland Public Market couldn't stay open for ten years even as public markets are flourishing?

Simple. Pike Place had a public partner in the city and is run as a nonprofit, while the Portland Public Market was completely private sector. Pike Place Market was founded by the city in 1907 after citizens who were tired of being taken advantage of middlemen demanded direct access to the producers. It was a success from day one. After a failed urban renewal attempt to raze the entire 9-acre market, the area was permanently protected as a historic preservation zone and the city established the nonprofit Pike Place Market Public Development Authority to run it, including apartments for 500 low-income residents/employees.

The result? Over 9 million people experience its 190 businesses, 120 farmers, 50 restaurants, and 240 street performers and musicians, as well as the famous flying fish at the Pike Place Fish Market. Of course, like any thriving destination, it has a regular slate of events: festivals, auctions, cooking demonstrations and its annual Sunset Supper, which is reminding of this outdoor dining scene in Sienna, Spain.

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Portland Public Market, OR

Portland Public Market - design isn't enough

In the heyday of cities, indoor public markets were as popular in U.S. cities as they are in most other cities around the world. After a few decades of the suburban experiment, they're making a return along with emerging populations of downtown residents. Perhaps a little too soon on the scene of this next generation fresh economy renaissance is the Portland Public Market in Maine. It broke ground in 1997, but wasn't been able to remain open despite award-winning accolades on its design. In other words, the point here is that this is what a public market should look like, but not developed and managed.

The hall housed 28 permanent vendors indoors, with 20 seasonal sidewalk vendors, all supported by area farmers, and two restaurants that featured such local products.
It represented the modern experience economy with events, festivals, catered parties, and a state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen for cooking classes. Starbucks started in such a market (Pikes Place Market in Seattle), another robin hood marketing lesson.

In the end, it was lack of a public-private partnership, not as much the norm back in the mid 90s as it is today, that simply made the project too costly for the private sector to succeed alone. This is especially the case with new construction - as noble as replacing a parking lot is, private sector new development without public partnerships typically means it must be upscale, and that's simply not what public markets are about.

For a review of public markets that have succeeded, though not nearly as beautiful, check out Project for Public Spaces' profiles.

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June 27, 2007

Nau

Triple bottom line retail

Cool towns are all about local indie businesses, and that's why it's important to listen to author Katya Andresen's message in her book, Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy To Sell Just Causes. You may not want to live among a herd of national chains, but it's wise to learn from them since they spend so much on market research and innovation.

One such business is Nau. Speaking of robin hood marketing, more than half of Nau comes from Patagonia, a long-time triple bottom line company. Rather than repeat Nau's marketing slogans, here's their triple bottom line approach:

Environmental/Planet
- The retail space is green building LEED-certified and prefabricated with reusable fixtures.
- Customers can try clothes on in the store, then use in-store kiosks to order them at 10% discounts and free shipping, cutting building space (and energy costs) by nearly half.
- It's fabric research is 'open source' to allow its competitors to benefit from and improve its environmental impact, and only using 100% certified organic cotton and wool and recycled/recyclable synthetics.

Social/People
- Customers choose which charity 5% of their purchase will go to. The industry standard on the high end is 1%.
- Minimum required age for overseas factory workers.
- The stores feature speakers on socially-conscious topics.

Economic/Profit
- Because they do such a great job of fulfilling the other two bottom lines, they've established a loyal and fast-growing customer base.

They also focus on a creative class market, witnessed by their fashionable, yet high performance biker shirt for women. Read more about them in Fast Company.

At the very least, Nau provides its customers with a unique status-driving story with each experience, as one observer noted, The place feels like a cocktail party". Here's one story for you - Nau's founder Eric Reynolds originally registered the company as UTW, which stands for "unf--k the world."

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June 26, 2007

Venice, Italy

What does the triple bottom line have to do with cool places?

First of all, what is the triple bottom line (3BL)? It's a business, organization or community that accounts for financial as well as social and environmental bottom lines - people, planet, profit. To answer the next question, how does a company know if it's indeed triple bottom line, check out the B Corporation (Benefit Corporation), which has a rating system.

Now, what does this have to do with cool places? Let's look at each of the bottom lines:

Economic/profit: If it doesn't make money, it isn't going to grow, much less be sustainable. Because cool places embody what people truly want in a community, this is rarely a problem. If anything, it's too much of a problem, such as in Venice (pictured) where it's so popular that a short gondola ride now costs $150.

Social/people: The key here is that a place becomes so desired, regular people can't afford it. Cool places have a strong focus on providing housing that is financially attainable through several methods. They also focus on emphasizing the local culture and economy, from supporting local businesses to investing in a civic-oriented tourism.

Environmental/planet: Cool places and towns prioritize walking over driving, green building over convention construction, and compact inner city development vs suburban/exurban sprawl. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) coined the term smart growth that is most used to describe re-investment in cities.

There are many, many more reasons to invest in cool towns/places under each bottom line, and we'll keep adding to the list.

Resource: 3BL Design was created to build next gen websites/webapps for, well, 3BL clients, especially CoolTown-oriented entities.

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June 25, 2007

Venice, Italy

Reader Q&A: Beta communities and economic integration

"Have you explored how beta communities would incorporate affordable housing and/or economic integration aspects, or is that not at all a focus?"

The CoolTown beta community program starts with identifying the most progressive, creative, entrepreneurial, triple bottom line individuals in the neighborhood. That typically means housing that is affordable is extremely important to their well being since their jobs aren't focused on maximizing their income, or are just starting to grow their businesses with intent to achieve that point. There are multiple strategies for developing attainably-priced homes without relying on government subsidies, and that's our focus.

As far as economic integration, that is largely an issue when developing in economically-challenged neighborhoods. In Anacostia, Washington DC, which is still trying to establish an economic base, our beta community program there is intent on not only identifying the emerging leaders that have a strong connection to the local community, but also have a vision of what the next generation of the neighborhood could be - based on the economic success of its existing population and culture rather than gentrifying it with 'outsiders'. For instance, in Anacostia that means a health-oriented African-American-owned green building restaurant vs a Ruby Tuesdays, and that's just what we're doing.

Image: Duke's City restaurant in Washington DC, named after Duke Ellington

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