...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 would still be highly upscale.

But why?  Let’s turn to

read more…

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 ‘happening’.

2. Smaller area.  There are 500 businesses in

read more…

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 Street Shopper Social, aka the Third Thursday

read more…

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 are taxed to create a fund to market and maintain the

read more…

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 it’d be if 87% of its retail were

read more…

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 commerce.  A couple of

read more…

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 community-based real estate development

read more…

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 industrial district to an artist community to what is now

read more…

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

read more…

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 retail sales nationally, yet in the small

read more…

There’s long been the usual insistence by veteran planners not to implement downtown pedestrian streets and malls, even recommending cities to remove them to allow cars through.  Times are changing, and it’s time to take another look.

Where did this myth come from?  The past:
Pedestrian malls, as mayors will tell you, were an act of desperation to compete with an already massive exodus to the ‘burbs and regional shopping malls, but certainly not the reason per se for their failure - ALL

read more…

Downtown independent retailers don’t have the financial muscle or exposure of the national retailers out in the malls, but there most powerful asset is their independence.  That means they have the freedom to do whatever is necessary for them to compete with the suburban juggerauts, and that’s to create an experience when shopping for their merchandise.

Take apparel stores for instance.  There are few places outside of a downtown main street where one will find a collection of unique, often

read more…

It’s a global economy, so how can small businesses compete?  They can become a tenant in Minneapolis’ coming global marketplace, the Midtown Global Market, the first of its kind anywhere.

The market will feature 60 local merchants representing Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, andd the Middle East, and African American and Native American business owners.  Another innovative element of the market is that these businesses will be divided by their stages of growth: start-up, second-stage

read more…

There’s been a heated discussion lately in at the urbanism watering hole, and that’s, “Is there a difference between a main street and a shopping street?  The answer is yes and no.

Yes, there’s a difference: Main streets are typically known to serve a neighborhood.  Shopping streets, which include outdoor malls, cater to an entire region.  Main streets have neighborhood-oriented venues like a coffeeshop, hair stylist, deli, pub, etc., many of which are independent businesses, while shopping

read more…

What are the primary trends, positive and negative, in creating and maintaining vibrant, safe downtown entertainment districts?  The Responsible Hospitality Institute, which focuses on these very issues, conducted extensive research to arrive at the following:

Split-use districts: In cities that have achieved a 24/7 nightlife, the demographics often change rather dramatically at 10 pm, between people who are going home and people who are just arriving.  Venues and main streets need to be able

read more…

“Showcasing historic buildings and innovative ideas that bring new businesses, new people, new uses, and new life to their traditional commercial areas of all types and sizes.“

That’s this year’s Cool Cities theme featured next week Sunday through Wednesday when the 2005 National Main Streets Conference strolls through Baltimore, MD.

While the annual event focuses on general techniques for managing historic main streets, it does indeed have a full slate of Cool City presentations not

read more…

The 14th & U main street district in Washington DC was a jazz mecca in its heyday in the first half of the 20th century, when the likes of Duke Ellington, Billy Holiday, and Louis Armstrong were regulars.  40 years after the riots, jazz has not only returned to 14th & U, but its legacy is also spawning a new era of live music, entertainment and a population explosion to the area.

How did this happen?  It helps when you can retain institutions like Bohemian Caverns (a jazz club since 1926)

read more…

The merchants that make up thriving arts & entertainment/nightlife districts should get kudos and cheers for helping revitalize economically suffering neighborhoods.  However, if they don’t collaborate as a community, they may be in for some serious hate mail, lawsuits and stress from angry residents (collectively known as brain damage).

Here’s one major reason why - as the desirability of neighborhoods go up because of the revitalization that entertainment brings, new homebuyers often don’t

read more…

Successful downtowns require a successful retail district.  Today, that retail district must be developed as a retail entertainment district to survive and thrive.  So, who should that district focus on?

Again, we quote our star of the week, retail entertainment expert Michael Beyard, “The ability to reach market segments that are easily overlooked - including women, members of generations X and Y, and even baby boomers, who are getting older but not �aging� - will determine whether

read more…

The conflicts: Museums and performing arts centers are struggling amid public budget cuts and a rather stuffy image.  Meanwhile, downtown retail districts are having difficulties maintaining its local culture as well as attracting large crowds (as the old theaters once did).

The opportunity:In the words of retail entertainment expert Michael Beyard, “Retail entertainment offers these institutions an opportunity to broaden their markets and compete more effectively for consumers� time and

read more…

Main streets are no longer the department-store-oriented retail districts they used to be.  Now they must be entertainment retail districts to survive and thrive, which is consistent with our shift to an experience economy.  Here are the new retail categories as the industry resource Urban Land Institute sees them.

Fun and leisure - interactive sports, sports bar, coffee bar, outdoor cafe, billiards/bowling/games;
Nesting - home entertainment, furnishings, and electronics;
Health and beauty -

read more…

They’re worth at least that much a year in cash to a main street, but that’s just the beginning.  Just ask Sylvia Allen of Allen Consulting, who is a guru at attracting sponsor dollars for main streets and has the following tip:

Simply putting up attractive vertical banners throughout a small downtown will bring in a good share of revenue to market its merchants, not to mention providing a tremendous amount of identity.  People often identify a mall as a single, one-stop destination, but they

read more…

Boulder’s downtown pedestrian street (Pearl Street) is one of only a few in the U.S. that survived the regional enclosed mall phase that began in the 1960s and now ending.  What’s their secret?

Pearl Street’s shops and restaurants account for only 30% of its square footage, all on the ground floor. A whopping 52% is devoted to private offices, mainly on the second and third floors, while the rest (18%) is government offices and other civic uses as churches, the bus depot, and police station. 

read more…

As they say, “If San Francisco had a French quarter, Belden Place would be it.“  It’s an intimate, human-scaled alley lined with cafes, tucked away between Bush and Pine, Kearny and Montgomery streets in the Financial District.  The entire pedestrian-only street (paseo) is one elongated dining room, and a larger version of the ones in Sienna, Spain.

While they do celebrate Bastille Day in the alley, the day-day culinary experience is anything but exclusively French.  On any given day, one can

read more…

In addition to the new and exciting restaurants and shops (eg the CakeLoves) that can spark a downtown revival, you need the neighborhood institutions, the ones that withstood the riots, the mass exodus to the burbs, urban renewal and the relentless unpredictability of keeping a restaurant open.  Why?  Because it not only provides a sense of history and place, but a sense of security that the same people have been in the same place for so long.

Easier said than done, but Ben’s Chili Bowl,

read more…