“How can I keep chains out of my neighborhood?“

It’s a familiar refrain from urban creatives, such as the following one from a progressive developer, “How can you legally do this? Keep out the chains and corporate company’s like Starbucks, the Gap, TGI Friday’s, McDonalds, HARD ROCK CAFE’S! They are all part of the whole “Generica” movement, you could be anywhere in the country and not no where you are based on your surroundings. I want [our neighborhood] to be something you can’t just get

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Time for indie tenants to meet real estate investors halfway

While it’s , it’s also time for local independent tenants to make it easier for developers to lease to them. The simple reason why an overwhelming majority of new developments prefer leasing out to national chains rather than local independent businesses is because chains can pay more rent, and that’s because they have an established patronage once they open. This is why

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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

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Main streets go virtual to serve local community

We all know Amazon.com serves the world’s goods, but how about if you just wanted to buy online from local neighborhood shops?  Not only that, but what if delivery was free?!  Well Pop to the Shops is another one of those ‘it was a matter of time’ services, though only in the UK.

What are the benefits to the consumer?
- Most local shops are open fewer hours and days, so this expands their hours to 24/7.
- Buy from all the stores in the

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How to recognize independent businesses that will thrive

Don’t shoot the messenger because I can’t disagree more, but this is one chain-oriented retail consultant’s take on why real estate developers choose chains over independent businesses: small retailers are lazy, will not work evenings and weekends, do not pay their rent on time, whine all the time, blame others for their failures, offer poor service, have low sales, do not update, clean or maintain their store interiors, and thus

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Wow - City to establish significant fund to invest in local venues?!

A local institution on Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, Las Manitas, a Mexican restaurant and crowd favorites, must say goodbye after 25 years. It’s lease was up, and the building owner already signed a new one with Marriott. However, Austin’s city government isn’t your typical city government, and its leaders proposed to do something about it.

They’re proposing the Congress Avenue Retail Retention and Enhancement Fund

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Evolving a retail center into a community center

Retail seen as ‘the Achilles’ heel’ of some TODs (transit-oriented development), reads a recent New Urban News headline, spotlighting the Latino Fruitvale Village retail center in Oakland, CA.

We highlighted its difficulties with attracting patrons at the beginning of this year. The key is to establish the retail center as a community center - the equivalent of the town square where ‘everything happens’. In other words, the place needs

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Transcending retail chain districts: The VIBE beta guild

Creatives, urbanites want local, indie businesses. Developers know about investing in real estate, not small businesses, and not only do national/regional chains make it easier for them, they can pay 3-5 times more rent. That’s a crippling dilemma.

Enter the VIBE beta community, where VIBE (introduced in the previous entry) stands for variegated independent business entrepreneur and the beta community is a future group of tenants

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1.5M s.f. new shopping center, zero new parking

A neglected series of buildings is expanding by an additional one million s.f. of retail, entertainment and university, yet there’s no additional parking being added?  Yes, the $460M San Francisco Centre is indeed in a city like no other, but it just goes to show you that living-without-a-car is one of the hottest trends going.

Granted, by its sheer size and location it is a regional shopping destination, so that means predominantly chains,

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That’s the question answered by the Urban Land Institute, and the answer is that at least for the newly built town-center-style shopping centers, they’re trying.

All five examples provided in the report are unaffordable for most as far as residences and offices are concerned, and largely consisting of chains, but what’s noteworthy is that the developers are providing public spaces for everyone that have the potential for being third places.

In addition to thousands of square feet of window

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Growing an historic small town center

Most of the 22,000 residents of Hudson, OH (30 minutes from Cleveland) were no longer shopping downtown, but going elsewhere - a familiar story.  Not so common however, is the level of vision and investment to reverse that trend.

The City and Hudson Village Development; a development company formed by Tom Murdough, a 31-year old entrepreneur who wanted better for his town, formed a public-private partnership to expand its historic 200-year-old downtown

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Of the accepted applicants to the University of Connecticut each year, about two-thirds decide to go elsewhere. The #1 reason, based on annual surveys?  Lack of a college town.

So, the Town of Mansfield CT, the University, and a visionary real estate developer, Leyland Alliance, partnered to establish the Mansfield Downtown Partnership to build… a college town center.  And a pretty cool one at that.

Next year, the $165 million Storrs Center will commence, with 200,000 s.f. of retail and

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The success story behind Memphis’ Beale Street

How does one turn a boarded up main street into the iconic historical, cultural and musical destination that is Beale Street today?  It took an immensely forward-thinking young developer, John Elkington, that understood the history well enough to invest in its future.  The following is based on his interview with Smart City Radio.

Brief history. In the 1920s and 30s Beale Street was an entertainment mecca for African-Americans and one of the

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More evidence: Main streets are in, malls are out

For the last few decades, we were pretty much forced to drive to malls to shop at chains.  It seems like the tide is turning, as one retail consultant puts it, “The behemoth mall is clearly giving way to more manageable, accessible and open-air centers.“  In other words, downtown main streets are ‘in’ again.

In this Wall Street Journal article, the company that owns all those ‘Mills’ malls, Mills Corp., is being sold on account of

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How to develop an indie retail center without going upscale?

So how does one develop a new independent-business retail center as an economic success without going upscale?  In continuation of yesterday’s entry, here’s Kennedy Smith:

“To make it work in everyday neighborhoods, or even in ‘slightly more affluent than everyday’ neighborhoods, the costs of that sort of intensive support system for independent businesses must be shared by the public sector (small business development centers,

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Why building a CoolTown retail center isn’t easy… yet

...and that’s defined as a retail-entertainment destination town center of innovative, local, independent businesses targeting a progressive, creative audience on a budget.

Until now, there really wasn’t a means of developing such a place as new - any new retail center consists of national and regional chains (like CityPlace, West Palm Beach, pictured.)  Even if the focus was on independent businesses (as they are in ski resorts), it

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Lessons learned from a grassroots multi-merchant event

The U Street Shopper Social in MidCity, Washington DC, highlighted yesterday, has been running for a few years when such grassroots campaigns to attract new customers start to lose momentum.

Some keys to a successful promotion:

1. Shorter period of time.  The Shopper Social is only from 5-8 pm, so the crowds are more intense.  If it were any longer, the crowds would be dispersed to the point no one would feel like there’s something

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Merchants take matters into their own hands

Yesterday’s entry on how independent businesses can work together by forming strategic alliances.  However, the models presented are bureaucratic structures that can take years to establish, and even though they’re worth it, it’s not in the spirit of how an entrepreneurial independent business operates.

That’s why a group of merchants on U Street in MidCity, Washington DC formed their own ad hoc group and began a monthly tradition known as the U

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Independent businesses go interdependent to compete

How can independent businesses possibly compete with the marketing clout of the big regional malls or the national reach of big box chains?  Well, their best tactic is to build a community of commerce - a network of local businesses working together with a common purpose.  As they say, a rising tide floats all ships.

One of the most effective ways of accomplishing this is to legislate a Business Improvement District (BID) where businesses

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A quick review of San Jose’s Santana Row

Santana Row in San Jose, CA does not have any housing that can be afforded by a majority of the creative class, nor does it sport independent businesses, favoring upscale chains instead.  For those two reasons alone, it’s nowhere close to being a ‘cooltown’.  However, it does have some of the best new placemaking and urban design anywhere in the entire San Francisco Bay Area, and for that it deserves merit.  In other words, just imagine how amazing

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But where are the people?

While the Fruitvale Village development profiled yesterday is indeed a success story in that a visionary developer transformed it from a parking garage proposal into a beautiful, walkable community of residences, offices, and shops, it hasn’t quite succeeded on the retail just yet.

Businesses like a florist, take-out restaurant, and chiropractor are struggling, wondering why all that pedestrian traffic from the busy transit station commute doesn’t translate into

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Oakland’s inspiring Fruitvale Village

In continuing a look at the most innovative new developments in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, our last stop is at Fruitvale Village in Oakland, and one of the most meaningful success stories.

The local latino community in Fruitvale felt the parking lot adjacent to the neighborhood’s ‘BART’ light rail station (the East Bay’s 4th busiest) had a better fate than a parking garage as was originally planned in 1991.  The savior?  The nonprofit

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Berkeley’s 4th Street - a destination with destinations

Great retail entertainment districts not only provide a strong sense of place, as Bay Street Emeryville does (profiled yesterday), but must-visit restaurants and stores as well, which it does not.

Berkeley’s 4th Street does on both counts.

While not as spatially dramatic as its neighbor (Bay Street), 4th Street has become known as an artistic, creative and increasingly chic main street of about 130 businesses.  Transformed from an

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It’s now a common evolutional trend where retail is merging with entertainment.  In fact, downtown needs to in order to survive, as the economy moves from a goods/services economy to an experience economy.

There are three essential components to ‘cooltown-certified’ retail entertainment districts:  great placemaking and unique venues, both of which become destinations unto themselves, and a good supply of attainable housing.  Of course, other factors like tenant mix, location, etc. are

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Internet helping revive downtowns?

This says it all, from a successful small business owner:  “The internet has taken a small family-owned candle business and allowed us to compete on a national level while contributing to the redevelopment of our downtown area in central Virginia.”

A U.S. Small Business Administration study found that “the smallest firms with fewer than 10 employees benefit the most from being online”.  The evidence: Online sales account for only 2.2% of all

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