To mall or not to mall?
THE BOSTON Redevelopment Authority had every reason to seek advice on reviving Downtown Crossing. When Filene's and Jordan Marsh faced each other at the intersection of Washington, Winter, and Summer streets, the area was the retail heart of Greater Boston. Not anymore. Downtown Crossing has never developed a new identity. While it still has plenty of stores, the area -- a pedestrian mall for the last quarter century -- looks underused, past its prime, and in need of new life.
The fundamental question is whether to reopen Washington Street to traffic, a step this page has advocated. The BRA has brought in consultants from across the continent to study Downtown Crossing, and they have dismissed that option. Instead, they would go in the opposite direction. In presentations last week, they talked not just of preserving Washington Street as a pedestrian mall, but also of building the street up to curb level, taking more aggressive steps to keep vehicles out, and expanding the car-free zone to take in Bromfield and Franklin streets.
Many of the consultants' ideas -- better lighting, more public art -- are appealing, and the sketches are dazzling. Still, the success of a retail district depends not just on aesthetics but on economics. The clientele for a new, improved pedestrian mall may not be broad enough to revive the entire district. And the burden is on proponents of an enhanced mall to prove that the change won't cause transportation tie-ups in the surrounding area.
Tens of thousands of people pass through Downtown Crossing every day. Persuading more of them to linger and spend money in the area would go a long way toward bringing it back to life. But some proposed amenities sound more like intriguing niche products than mass-market appeals. Consultants talked about an Idea Store, a modernized version of a public library; a food hall, where shoppers can buy fresh produce from vendors; and bicycle taxis, which allow people to get around without contributing to global warming. Philadelphia-based marketing consultant Darryl Cilli talked of bringing in stores like the Japanese retailer Muji, which he described as "Ikea, Staples, and American Apparel rolled into one."
In the past, the names of more basic retailers, such as Target, have been bruited about as potential tenants in the area. One stated goal for the Downtown Crossing initiative is to revive the area without turning it into another upscale shopping zone like Newbury Street. Yet a pedestrian-only model would likely exclude workaday stores whose customers might need cars to pick up their purchases. It could also complicate plans for mixed-use construction, since residential and hotel developments benefit from round-the-clock access by delivery vans and taxis.
Neighborhoods can't easily be willed back to life. Urban America is full of once-seedy areas that became vibrant again because hipster homesteaders settled in them. More inhabitants would give Downtown Crossing a similar boost, as the BRA has recognized with past efforts to encourage people to live there. New residents tend to fix up property, pick up trash, keep an eye out for crime, and demand better city services. Over time, restaurants and shops pop up to accommodate these residents.
Pressed for examples of systematically planned efforts to revitalize neighborhoods, BRA consultants pointed to Denver's thriving Lower Downtown district. In truth, a number of complex factors were responsible for transforming "LoDo" from a wasteland of abandoned warehouses into a prime retail, residential, and entertainment zone. The district has benefited, for instance, from the two major sports venues -- Coors Field and Pepsi Center -- that bookend it.
Meanwhile, some of the most important government-led interventions had nothing to do with the physical appearance of the district. Dana Crawford, a real estate developer who played a key role in the Denver neighborhood's revitalization, says the city furthered the process by mandating the preservation of historic buildings and promoted homeownership in LoDo by offering soft second mortgages. Denver also encouraged home construction by setting a more liberal maximum height for developments with residential units than for purely commercial projects.
It's worth noting, though, that the LoDo area does contain a pedestrian mall, one of the few successful ones in the country. One indicator of its popularity is use of a shuttle that carries shoppers along it. Crawford cites a newspaper editorial in pooh-poohing predictions that 14,000 people a day would ride the shuttle; on an average day, she says, more than 60,000 people now use the service. The LoDo case offers a reminder that ideas sometimes work out wildly better than anyone expects.
Then again, sometimes they don't. Although many who attended a public meeting in Boston last week clearly liked the renderings of a car-free mall lined with sidewalk cafes, pedestrianization has a bad track record at Downtown Crossing. At best, keeping motor vehicles out failed to arrest the decline of the area; at worst, it has prevented stores from being discovered by passing motorists and made the area feel half-deserted after rush hour -- and therefore less safe. Insofar as tighter restrictions on cars makes it even harder for tourists to stay in Downtown Crossing, and for people to move there permanently, they could hamper the kind of change necessary to make the neighborhood vibrant well into the future.
