Quote:
Originally Posted by Bailey
Maybe one of the "retail components" of one of the new buildings around the new convention center hotel can house a Macy's or a Target. There would appear to be plenty of foot traffic in that part of downtown and they may make it work there by using the new downtown residents (one park place, new ball park apartments, etc.), the tourists/conventioneers (hotels), and Houston area residents coming to downtown for the park, a concert, a convention, or a ball game.
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That seems shaky.
The edge of a downtown can be a good spot for a second retail core if it can draw heavily from the nearest couple hundred thousand residents (who would mostly drive there in this scenario). And a good range of events (conventions, games) can help the restaurant component. But big events can also scare off a lot of those residents due to traffic. For any retail area it's important to become a "habit" or "default" for a lot of people, and stuff like game traffic can interrupt that.
The neighborhood is obviously gaining some residents and hotels, but the numbers aren't high enough. Add another few thousand hotel rooms within an easy walk and that'll be a big component. The resident count is drops in the bucket...build another few thousand units and you'll have better groceries and takeout, but it even dozens of towers wouldn't be a serious factor for a Macy's.
A caveat...if you did add a lot of residents (say 5,000 units within 1/3 mile), you might create the sort of environment that can also attract many people from elsewhere around town...these things can snowball. For example, residents can give more restaurants a reason to open when the workers and conventioneers aren't around, bring furniture stores, add to pedestrian traffic, focus attention on nuisances, etc. Part of the snowball effect is that office workers and tourists will also tend to spend more when there's more for sale.
Convention centers and arenas/stadia are a big problem because without a major event they're dead zones and barriers on a large scale.
The bar is lower for something like a City Target. They have a lot of things but not a ton of anything, and they're smaller. I'm not impressed with Seattle's (the supermarket is 90% mass-market packaged stuff, they don't sell the other two things I've wanted to buy there, juggling balls and a computer, and they have zero ambiance) but they fill a lot of gaps.