Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [68]
Proactive Leasing and Retail Mix: When a mall first opens, or when a vacancy occurs, space is not simply leased to the first qualified applicant that comes along. Rather, the management carefully determines what type of store will best contribute to the mall’s retail mix and seeks it out, often offering incentives for relocation. In addition, mall management recognizes that certain stores fare better or worse in proximity to certain other stores, and arranges shops according to a careful merchandising plan. Mutually supportive stores are clustered to form such places as fashion districts and entertainment districts. We’ve watched retail consultants sit in a closed room for hours on end, painstakingly assembling stores like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle. While this approach may seem unwieldy on Main Street, with its patchwork of ownership interests, an effective merchants’ association can monitor the store mix and actively seek the ideal businesses to fill vacancies as they arise.
Dimensions: Whether indoors or out, the best retail street has certain dimensions, related to complex physical and social predilections. Although commercial corridors may stretch uninterrupted for miles in some cities, the most successful shopping streets restrict their length to a reasonable walking distance, usually less than half a mile. Their width is similarly constrained in order to ensure visibility from one side to the other, so that when exiting one store you are looking straight at the display of another. For this reason, malls usually keep their corridors less than fifty feet wide, a dimension that is, of course, easier to achieve in the absence of cars. Since the best main streets have two-way driving, parallel parking, and wide sidewalks, about sixty feet is a workable standard. Sidewalks should be at least twelve feet wide, which is ample enough for passage and for outdoor dining, something the malls cannot provide. cl
Retail Continuity: The American shopper has an attention span surpassed in brevity only by that of the American adolescent television viewer. Experience suggests that most strolling shoppers will not walk down dead-end streets—thus the need for big stores at the ends of malls. In addition, they will turn around and head back to their cars rather than walk past fifty feet of blank wall. This explains why malls generally do not include post offices: stamp posters are simply too boring to endure. While malls turn down the U.S. Mail, Main Street has to incorporate banks, brokerage houses, travel bureaus, and real-estate offices, with their plain walls and boring displays. These must be located so as not to interrupt retail continuity for more than the shortest stretches: either dispersed in small increments, or collected in a harmless location off the main shopping trajectory.
Incubators: Pushcarts serve a purpose in suburban malls, which is to incubate new businesses until they do well enough to afford their own storefront space. The same process can occur on Main Street, supplemented by additional incubators such as live/work units and artists’ cooperatives. The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria is one such example of an industrial-loft-turned-arts-incubator that has become a tourist anchor. Often, for such ventures to be successful, fledgling