Cours Mirabeau, Aix-en-Provence, France

Cutting edge thinking among urbanists and the progressive development community is that American consumers are tired of the covered shopping mall and are seeking a return to the walkable downtown retail experience – or that’s what one hears at the Urban Land Institute and the International Downtown Association (David Milder’s blog analyzing retail trends on medium and small-sized city downtowns is required reading towards this end: http://www.ndavidmilder.com/blog). But, what makes the experience of being on Main Street great? What would make it better? What do we enjoy about being there? What opportunities does this create for aging Downtowns across the country?

Jamaica Avenue, Queens

Jamaica Avenue in southeast Queens, New York is a one-mile retail sub-district in a city of over eight million people and a region of over sixteen million that is model for the future of Main Street. For almost its entire length there is a span of exactly one hundred feet from building line to building line across the street, although the width of the adjacent sidewalks and streetbed vary. The street is heavily trafficked, with on-street parking on some blocks, over forty bus lines serving the downtown, front door deliveries and the avenue serving as an important (if congested) east/west through corridor. Pedestrian counts at its three main intersections are similar to those at Manhattan’s most highly trafficked corners. Even after the recession of 2008, retail vacancies remained low. Retail rents today range from $60 per square foot in mid-block locations to $150 per square foot at prime corners. There are few retail spaces larger than 5,000 square feet. The retail mix is heavily oriented towards regional apparel chains catering to a discount customer, with fast food, local banks, a multiplex movie theater and a few national retailers mixed in. The primary trade area is generally defined to be a population of about 600,000. While the downtown once boasted three department stores it now has none.

Jamaica Avenue, Queens. Typical retail presentation.

By many measures this is an economically healthy retail corridor. But most people in the community feel that there is something wrong with the situation. It is important to understand that while four blocks north of Jamaica lies one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Queens (Jamaica Estates), the area the south and east of the Avenue is entirely a community of color: long a preserve of African-American home owners and more recently the destination of Caribbean, South Asian and Central American families. And while there are nearby census tracts that qualify as low-income, Queens, surprisingly, is the only county in the United States where African-American median household income exceeds that of white families. The principal complaint of local residents about the downtown is that the retailers there do not serve their needs. Middle class families of color report that they do their shopping in other places, such as the Roosevelt Field and Green Acres malls on Long Island, and Rego Center and Skyview Mall in other neighborhoods in Queens.

Jamaica Avenue, Queens New York. Aerial view

To me, the pedestrian experience on Jamaica Avenue for its entire length is unpleasant, and as a consumer, there is very little that I would buy there. Is that a reflection of my upper-middle class whiteness? Perhaps. But let’s assume that American consumers have more in common, regardless of their economic status or racial background, than they have differences. Over the last three years, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about why walking down Jamaica Avenue is less than great. With hundreds of millions of private dollars now being invested in housing, hotels and large format retail spaces, there is a need to make sure that the new people coming to Jamaica are well served by the downtown’s amenities. Borough President Melinda Katz and Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen have brought more attention to this issue as a result of their “Jamaica Now” initiative, which is seeking to support the changes taking place in Downtown Jamaica with quality of life initiatives and community engagement. Most recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo awarded the Downtown $10 million in economic development grant funds to further its revitalization. So, there is a considerable amount of government focus on doing the Downtown’s revitalization right.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the 100 feet between buildings lines along Jamaica Avenue needs to be rethought and reallocated in order to make the street a great place. A new balance needs to be struck among the claimants to the space, where the private car (both moving and parked) is essentially privileged over buses and pedestrians. But even more importantly, I’ve concluded after looking at thousands of images of the best retail streets in the world, and in looking carefully at retail streets around the country and Europe during my recent travels, that the street needs more and larger trees. It’s that simple. Trees make great retail streets. We in the public space management business have embraced seating as a key move in park improvement, but we have failed to recognize what an important element shade is. Exhibit “A” of this is the failed Pershing Square in Los Angeles. What is essentially wrong with Pershing Square isn’t that it is poorly designed, doesn’t have enough seating, has too much hardscape and is poorly maintained and programmed. While all of those things are true, why people avoid the most important public space in downtown L.A. is that it is too darn hot. The winning team in the recent design competition, led by Agence Ter, gets this and the centerpiece of their proposal is a large shade structure.

Cours Mirabeau, Aix-en-Provence, France

Look at the Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence, France, perhaps the most beautiful “high street” in the world. It is characterized by magnificent chestnut trees, broad sidewalks and outdoor café seating. The Cours invites everyone to linger. It is both lively and comfortable to be in. Now, most modern retailers will tell landlords that they don’t want trees blocking their shop windows and that ideally they want their frontage to be an unobstructed tall glass box. Why do they want this? I suspect it is unverified conventional wisdom. My guess is that they don’t really know. The regional and local retailers in Jamaica, in my experience, don’t really have an understanding about what works. There is nothing particularly appealing about either their product assortment or their merchandising. While my own race and class may bind my view, I think not. Jamaica retailers know that whatever they are doing now is making money for them and they don’t want to mess with that formula. They block their windows with paper signs. They crowd their selling floors with as much merchandise as they can jam in. They blare incomprehensible hawking through loudspeakers. Paco Underhill, author of “Why We Buy” and a student of Holly Whyte, would tell them they are just plain wrong and are reducing their gross sales through their conventional but dysfunctional merchandising. In my judgment, even the national retailers are generally more interested in controlling their spaces than in maximizing sales and foot traffic through how they present their boxes to the street.

State Street, Chicago

Great public and retail places are streets where people want to go. I’m convinced that great streets make for great sales. The transformation of State Street in Chicago from a deserted transitway to one of the most active mid-market retail corridors in the country was driven by a brilliantly redesigned streetscape with broad sidewalks and ubiquitous horticultural displays. Great retail streets have trees, seating, continuous retail frontage and a regular rhythm of doors. All of those elements are essential. Check out the website of STIPO of Holland (http://www.stipo.nl/english) who understand “the city at eye level,” and have produced a great open source handbook on street design. The folks at STIPO have studied this carefully and demonstrate that active streets need a continuous street wall up to about the third floor, and a regular rhythm of doors to create street level activity. The long yellow brick walls of The Home Depot and Target are death to walkable neighborhoods. Despite their data-free inclination, I would suggest that putting local shops in front of a big retail box might actually increase traffic and sales, and do nothing to cannibalize what’s going on inside the box. Some of the storefront local retailers should be eating and drinking establishments with outdoor café seating for as much of the year as possible, activating the street and drawing even more people to the downtown.

Like so many other downtown corridors, Jamaica Avenue has a great window of opportunity. It has an aging streetscape infrastructure installed in the late seventies, meant to be maintained by BIDs that no longer have the capacity to do so. The red brick sidewalk pavers are degraded and are a tripping hazard, and the distinctive Belgian block crosswalks have been ravaged by utility companies and the Department of Transportation over the decades. The rusting Metro-Modular lighting and signal stanchion system installed at the same time has already been replaced by a new art deco pole design featuring state of the art, white LED luminaires. The Downtown sidewalks need to be resurfaced and planted with London plane trees and benches. The distribution of space between the sidewalk and street needs to be reevaluated, with busses (perhaps assigned to a dedicated one-way center lane) and pedestrians given preference over private cars. Sidewalk restaurants bars and cafés need to be incentivized to open there.

A reimagined main street will be essential to sustaining Jamaica’s burgeoning renaissance. Jamaica Avenue has the potential for a distinctive future, serving as a unique, high quality retail corridor supporting and reflecting a relatively affluent community of color. A formula combining shade, seating, a continuous retail street wall, and sidewalk dining and drinking can be a winning one anywhere. Thoughtfully programmed main streets are coming back and transforming main streets into great places is essential to their renewed success.

Jamaica Avenue elevated train, which was dismantled in the 80’s and replaced with subway service.