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Place Making in SuburbiaNovember 28, 2000Reinventing suburban communities with a sense of place.In the 1980s, when the New York Islanders hockey team won the Stanley Cup four years in a row, the team's triumphant motorcade was reduced to circling around the suburban Nassau Coliseum parking lot as loyal fans cheered them on. There was nowhere else to go. That sad scene could soon change as "place making"--a new development trend discussed at ULI's first place-making conference held a year ago last June in Chicago--drives the reinvention of dozens of suburban communities across the country as well as new development, creating places where there were none. "Places" take many forms: from old-fashioned main streets and town squares, to traditional big-city downtowns, to newly developed suburban town centers. Each creates a public realm that gives a community its heart, its character, its identity, and, most important, a place where all kinds of people can come for a wide variety of everyday activities, from early in the morning until late at night, seven days a week. As lifestyles become more mobile, computerized, and hectic, many people are finding that they crave connection. They also crave reality and are turning away from overstructured, formulaic places that do not look or feel real--such as could-be-anywhere shopping malls--and turning instead to real places such as downtowns and town centers. Many declining 1950s and 1960s inner suburbs see place making as one way to create an easily recognizable--and marketable--identity and character that can attract new businesses, residents, and development, increase property values and tax revenues, and help them compete with their newer, shinier counterparts in the outer suburbs. Also fueling the place-making trend are changing retail patterns, the increasingly powerful smart growth and new urbanism movements, and more forward-looking developers who are willing to take a chance on new products that serve both the community and the bottom line. Place making is by necessity a cooperative process in which developers, local governments, architects, businesses, and residents work together--from formulating a vision, to gaining approvals and financing, to construction and leasing. As a result, place making has turned real estate developers into city builders. They no longer are constructing isolated projects, they are building large-scale multidimensional places that will last for generations. In becoming city builders, however, developers have found that longstanding rules of development are changing. So are the determinants of success. Because place making extends far beyond constructing a single stand-alone project, it requires a broad vision that encompasses streets, sidewalks, buildings, open spaces, and people. In formulating a vision, developers "must capture the public imagination, or it won't happen," notes Michael Sizemore, a principal at Sizemore Floyd Architects of Atlanta. "If the vision doesn't catch your breath, it's too dull." But he adds an important caveat: "If the vision isn't founded in reality, it won't work. You've got to walk the fine line between the two." "Balancing vision and practicality is essential" to place making, says George de Guardiola, president of de Guardiola Development Ventures of West Palm Beach, which is building Abacoa Town Center in Jupiter, Florida. "Vision should guide the place-making master plan, but practicality must structure and sell it." When de Guardiola was leasing buildings at Abacoa Town Center, he did not meet any prospective tenants who asked questions about town planning issues. They wanted to know about traffic counts, circulation, and parking--just as they would about any conventional development. The following criteria must be met for successful place making: Location. Place making may be a new development trend, but it has not supplanted that tried-and-true real estate axiom: location, location, location. Whether the town center is in a new community or in a reinvented inner suburb, its location must be easily accessible and best serve the community and the market. Ideally, the location should be underserved by retail, office, and other uses in order to lure tenants. "Reston [Virginia] is eight miles from Tysons Corner, the largest retail concentration in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, which meant we faced tremendous competition," points out Thomas D'Alesandro, vice president of Terrabrook, which owns Reston Town Center. "Yet there is little retail between Tysons and Reston. We couldn't get anchor department stores," he adds, "but we could offer something else, like distinctive retailers and entertainment, to a market that didn't have many nearby options." The place-making location also can fill a niche. In Valencia, California, outside Los Angeles, Valencia's Town Center Drive complements the regional mall, which anchors the eastern end of the half-mile-long street, by creating a pedestrian-friendly main street environment, providing more upscale retail stores and restaurants, and including offices, a hotel, a conference center, and housing. Site Plan and Streets. A town center should not stand in splendid isolation, surrounded by surface and structured parking lots. To be successful, the site plan must integrate the town center into the surrounding community, both visually and physically, through compatible massing and scale, roads, and transit lines. The town center streets, for example, should connect with the existing street and sidewalk layout and actively encourage pedestrian uses, not just move cars as quickly as possible, which means avoiding overly wide streets. Anything wider than 60 feet usually encourages high-speed traffic, which creates a pedestrian-intimidating atmosphere, defeating place making at its most basic level. To calm through traffic, streets should be designed for two-way, single-lane traffic. One-way streets encourage faster traffic, no matter what the posted speed limit, and that can destroy a street's pedestrian-friendly character. On-street parking should be included. Whether angled or parallel, on-street parking buffers pedestrians from traffic and also serves to calm traffic. Bike lanes should be set aside to encourage greater bicycle use and to slow traffic. In addition, streets should be designed so that they can be closed for several hours twice a week to accommodate a farmers' market and remain open the rest of the time. Sidewalks. Sidewalks, like streets, knit buildings and open space into a public realm that people can share. Therefore, a town center's sidewalks should be wide enough to allow groups of people to stroll together and to stop and gaze into shop windows without blocking others. They also should be wide enough to accommodate sidewalk cafes in good weather. Flashy, expensive sidewalk treatments that require considerable maintenance should be avoided in favor of simple, durable, high-quality paving materials that wear well and provide a simple backdrop for the buildings, people, and activity on the street. Dark paving materials should be avoided, particularly in northern locations, since they create a gloomy atmosphere in winter. Plentiful shade trees, planters, and flower boxes are important place-making components, bringing color and a touch of nature to the street throughout the year. In the winter, trees can be strung with lights to create a cheerful and inviting street scene. In selecting street furniture, the latest, trendiest benches, kiosks, and transit shelters are not always the best. They may be eye catching, but they are not always comfortable or useful, and they can quickly begin to look dated. Simple, durable street furniture that serves its purpose well and complements the overall design of the street, sidewalks, and buildings should be selected instead. Particular attention should be paid to the placement of street furniture. Kiosks and transit shelters that block pedestrian activity and shop windows can defeat the place-making design. Pedestrian patterns and sightlines should be studied carefully and kiosks and shelters placed accordingly. Buildings. When people think of a place, one of the first things that comes to mind is its characteristic buildings, like the steepled white frame church on a New England village green or a courthouse on a Southern town square. As a result, a number of municipalities and developers are constructing one or more signature buildings in their town centers to create a stronger identity. The Celebration Company, for example, invested heavily in icon architecture for its new town, Celebration, Florida: Philip Johnson designed the town hall; Cesar Pelli designed the movie theater; and Michael Graves designed the post office. At the same time, successful and profitable place making requires more than architectural landmarks. To reflect its region, a town center should use local architectural designs, some regional materials, and local scale and massing, but it is not necessary to have a uniform design. Buildings on the older main streets and town squares are not of a single hand, but instead were built over the years in a variety of styles, notes Richard Heapes, a partner at Street-Works, a development and consulting group in Alexandria, Virginia. A single hand, no matter how skillful, will create a town center that feels overdesigned, he adds. A new town center therefore needs several different architects to create a variety of regionally appropriate styles that, together, create a genuine place. Because town centers will be in constant flux as tenants, users, and markets come and go, buildings should be designed to anticipate change and redevelopment. Some developers are constructing buildings flexible enough to accommodate housing, offices, or retail, depending on market demand. Landscaping also is important and can serve to unite the disparate elements of a town center into an attractive whole. Again, landscaping should be appropriate to the geographical area, as well as durable and easy to maintain. Design and Development Guidelines. Because town centers are so complex, developers must set strict design guidelines to create--and protect--the all-important sense of place. Poorly planned streetscapes and buildings can harm both a project's popular appeal and the developer's bottom line. In Schaumburg, Illinois, near Chicago's O'Hare Airport, for example, the retail and office buildings on the south side of the several-year-old town square are not double-loaded. The building fronts, with their large, pedestrian-pleasing windows, face the parking lot behind the town square. The less appealing building backs--which have windows, blank walls, and somewhat intimidating steel service doors and emergency exits--face the town square. To avoid such mistakes, master plans should require the ground floors of all buildings to have retail uses, including restaurants, to maintain a continuous level of activity and visual interest and to generate the street energy to attract pedestrians. The master plan also should focus on "build-to" lines, rather than setbacks, to allow pedestrian-friendly window shopping and to create a true town center ambience. Parking. A true place is filled with people, not cars. But since most people are going to drive their cars to a town center, carefully located and designed parking is an essential component of place making. Although street parking can be used to slow traffic and provide immediate access to shops and other uses, most parking areas should be tucked away behind the buildings. Both surface and structured parking lots have their advantages and disadvantages. Although surface lots are much easier, faster, and cheaper to construct than structured parking, they consume valuable land that could be devoted to buildings and open space. They also create large, empty spaces that separate buildings and uses, leaving holes in the town fabric that can disrupt its coherence. Some developers, however, use surface parking as land banks to be redeveloped later into structured parking and other uses. Parking structures can hold many more vehicles than surface lots, and they can be integrated into the town center's everyday life. For example, the ground floors of parking structures can contain low-cost retail spaces for shoe repair shops, pet groomers, and appliance repair shops, thereby providing a location for these services and enlivening the otherwise dull parking garage. The Right Uses. "A town center is not two strip malls facing each other," comments Gary A. Bowden, senior vice president at RTKL in Baltimore. A successful town center must have a wide variety of uses if it is going to create a true public realm that attracts people from early morning until late at night. Basic guidelines for planning town centers include the following: Civic Uses. Libraries, post offices, educational institutions, and town halls are essential for building a genuine place. They can bring legitimacy and strong pedestrian traffic to a town center, and they are permanently popular, points out Terry Shook, president of Shook Design Group of Charlotte, North Carolina. Unlike retailers and other users, they will not pack up and leave in a few years, creating holes in the overall development. But not all civic uses are created equal. A post office, for example, will be used primarily during the day. Libraries may be the best civic use of all, attracting a broad spectrum of residents and workers at all times of the day and into the evening. Some suburban libraries attract more than 1 million users a year, making them excellent anchors for town centers. Retail Uses. Retail, ideally a mix of local and national retailers, is "the glue that holds a place together," says Donald Hunter of Hunter Interests of Annapolis, Maryland. For Southlake Town Center in Southlake, Texas, for example, project developer Cooper & Stebbins programmed a 60/40 split between national and local retailers when leasing space to avoid creating a "chain row." While not discounting the importance of local retailers, de Guardiola believes that it is vital to sign national anchors for a town center project at the start. Nationally known stores make development financing easier to obtain, attract other national retailers and local merchants, and lure customers to the town center. To help establish an upscale identity for Phillips Place in Charlotte, North Carolina, and to differentiate its town center from nearby shopping centers, Peter A. Pappas, president of Pappas Properties of Charlotte, says he lured national restaurateurs and retailers that wanted only one outlet in the Charlotte market, including the high-end Palm restaurant and the Dean & Deluca gourmet food store. Not all national retailers work in a town center. The typical big box is anathema to this pedestrian-oriented environment, because the huge building and its acres of surface parking destroy the human scale that is the center's foundation. Still, with careful site planning and building design, some larger retailers can successfully fit hybrid stores into town center developments and reap the benefits of a strong customer base. When Crate & Barrel considered locating in Southlake Town Center, the retailer originally wanted a standard 40,000-square-foot building. Cooper & Stebbins, however, persuaded the national retailer to compromise on a two-story building with several distinct facades to break down the otherwise overwhelming building mass. Entertainment and Culture. Say the word "entertainment" to town center developers, and they immediately think of movie theaters. Cinemas generate significant pedestrian traffic, but they are just one form of entertainment, and one that is now standard in most shopping malls. Other forms of entertainment, such as cultural facilities, need to be included as well. Like civic uses, cultural facilities legitimize a place and put people on the street both day and night. A new town center does not need a Carnegie Hall, but it can benefit from live theaters and studio spaces for actors, artists, dancers, and musicians. Similarly, a town center does not need a major museum, but it can take part in a new trend that is putting branch museums in towns across the country. For example, Silver Spring, Maryland, will soon have a branch of the American Film Institute. (See "The Synergy of Mixed Uses," page 36, July Urban Land.) Offices and Hotels. Office tenants provide jobs for nearby residents and daytime customers for town center restaurants and stores. Offices also bring many people to a town center to conduct business who might otherwise not venture there. Some forward-thinking companies already have discovered that town centers offer the ideal combination of a close-to-home suburban location and a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environment. During lunch hours, employees can walk--not drive--to a restaurant, a bookstore, a dry cleaner, or a doctor's office. AT&T Wireless, for example, was attracted to Redmond Town Center near Seattle because of the development's pedestrian-oriented mixed uses. And for round-the-clock activity, a town center needs a hotel. A hotel is a destination unto itself, and guests create an important spillover effect, especially in the evening. Housing. Housing in or near a town center supplies customers and workers for retail and commercial uses. It also provides that all-important pedestrian traffic, which creates a feeling of safety and of movement and excitement on a street. Market demand is growing for housing in new town centers, particularly from young singles, childless couples, and seniors. In Celebration's town center, second-floor apartments above retail stores are popular. The high-end Montecito apartments that anchor one end of Valencia's Town Center Drive leased up faster than originally expected, and at the highest rents in the area. Financing Because place making is a new trend, many developers have had problems arranging financing from cautious lenders. Two banks in Charlotte, North Carolina, refused to provide financing for Phillips Place's specialty retail component. Pappas kept looking and finally found a willing bank in Alabama. De Guardiola offers some advice for pitching a town center to a potential financial source: keep the financing separate from the place making vision. "Make sure that someone who understands the project inside out presents the concept to the financing source. Then, have the financial people make a separate presentation about everything that lenders need to know." He says that he followed his own advice when he successfully pitched Abacoa Town Center to GMAC, which previously had never backed a town center. Most lenders are not used to making loans for mixed-use developments, so it is best to create several plats in a site plan. In effect, platting can be used to create a series of comfort zones for the lender. For Abacoa Town Square, de Guardiola says that he had a plat for the common areas, including parking decks; a plat for stand-alone apartments; and a plat for each commercial building. Thus, the lender was asked to lend money to particular plats, not a complex place-making development. Overcoming Hurdles One-half to two-thirds of planned place-making projects eventually will fail because developers choose bad locations or a bad mix of uses, spend too much money on the development, or have too much ego, according to Robert J. Gibbs, president of Gibbs Planning Group in Birmingham, Michigan. Even if developers can avoid those problems, they still must overcome a number of other hurdles: Development Codes. Many building and zoning codes require projects that create the antithesis of place. Initially, Cooper & Stebbins was told that all of the buildings in its 130-acre Southlake Town Center had to be set back from the street as if they were located in a suburban office park, every building had to have berms, and the land adjacent to two existing roads had to be developed with the highest value, leaving 60 to 70 percent of the site in an interior location with limited use. First, "town center developers should go to the appropriate officials and tell them why this project is different from others in the community," advises Steve Kellenberg, a principal in the Irvine, California, office of EDAW, a planning and landscape architecture firm. "If you show people that it's a new conceptual approach and that it's focused on the pedestrian experience, you can often get alternative design standards approved. If that doesn't work, developers can go to the planning commission itself and work from the top down to get the commission to buy into the project." Traffic codes also can wreak havoc with the best-planned town centers because they usually insist on overscaled streets that discourage pedestrian use and diminish the quality of life for residents, shoppers, and workers. Changing traffic codes is doubly daunting because they are enforced by both traffic engineers and fire officials; however, developers often can secure alternative street design standards by negotiating with these authorities. If that does not work, they can designate the town center's streets as private thoroughfares, which often have more flexible standards. Complying with traffic codes soon could become less difficult. The influential Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) recently released new street design guidelines for traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs), including town centers. These proposed guidelines, notes de Guardiola, have been issued for discussion, though not adopted formally by the ITE. Distinctiveness. Many town centers will have some of the same retailers, restaurant chains, and entertainment venues that fill shopping malls. The challenge is making town centers distinctive and keeping them fresh so that people will return to them again and again. Regional architecture, civic institutions, and cultural facilities are three ingredients. Developers also must create a truly local identity that makes their town center different from formulaic shopping malls. A real place has space for local professionals such as doctors and lawyers, local entrepreneurial shopkeepers, and local everyday services like hair salons, dry cleaners, and pet groomers. These local uses should not be relegated to one end of the street or around the corner. They should be interspersed among the national uses to avoid a could-be-anywhere chain row. Phasing. Most developers and municipalities do not have the luxury of building everything at once, as the Disney Co. did in Celebration's town center. Instead, they usually must develop the town center in phases to meet market demand and budget requirements, thereby stretching the development process over several years or more. Of course, phased development sets up an immediate challenge: how can the initial critical mass necessary to launch a town center successfully be created quickly? Some developers subsidize initial retail tenants through various measures, such as substantially reduced rents. Above all, developers should not be overly ambitious in the first phase of their town center. "Your first priority is creating continuity at the sidewalk level, so that you have a welcoming pedestrian connectivity from place to place," says Kellenberg. "If you must trade off a skyline or density to have that village feel, it's worth it. Many great pedestrian streets have one- and two-story buildings. So, in the beginning, it's better to be modest and go low rise--and create a successful critical mass--than to attempt a higher density, have lots of gaps in your town center, and fail to achieve a pedestrian scale and critical mass." Another challenge is holding back prime sites in anticipation of future growth, thereby allowing the developer to respond to changing markets and keep a town center fresh by bringing in new buildings and uses. One approach is to structure a joint venture with the site's original landowner or the project lender, says Brian R. Stebbins of Cooper & Stebbins. "We have legal control over the entire 130 acres at Southlake Town Center, but we don't have to take down the parcels for the next 15 years until we are ready, through an agreement with the original land owner," he explains. "We are driven by the marketplace, but we don't have to do things because of interest pressures." Looking Ahead Place making is the very essence of a real estate development. As people choose one place over another, the place of choice attracts a higher valuation and sells at a premium. Desired places are ones that appeal to all of the senses--sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. It is a rich mix of aesthetic design, the activities offered, the quality of providers, and price. Successful place making is therefore about meeting the demand from the local community. It is not a formulaic real estate product or the latest fad. Therefore, developers should exercise a high level of conceptualization and market matching in their place-making activities. Remember the fate of festival marketplaces? Once a red-hot trend, many quickly declined or died after they became formulaic and the fad wore off. If developers build a fad, rather than a true town center, they will fail. If, however, they build for the community, if they focus on people and place, they will create a lasting legacy, not to mention reap greater profits. Thomas L. Lee is chair and chief executive officer of the Newhall Land and Farming Company, a California real estate company. He was chair of ULI's place-making conference in Chicago June 2-3, 1999. | |
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