Walkable Thoroughfares Of Mom & Pop Shops And Why Cities Need More Of Them To Thrive

[M II A II R II K]

Chicago Needs More Classical “Main Streets”


June 8th, 2018

BY CHRISTEN GALL

Read More: http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/...-Main-Streets/

The concept of a classic main street—a wide road lined with mom and pop stores—may seem like it has no place in a metropolis like Chicago. But University of Chicago urbanist Emily Talen says that model is exactly what the city needs to keep its streets active and thriving.

- Earlier this year, Talen and co-author Hyesun Jeong published a study in the Journal of Urban Design examining main-type streets in Chicago and their benefit to city dwellers. They studied more than 40,000 blocks across Chicago, measuring factors related to services and amenities in daily life—services and amenities (like grocery stores, health clinics, libraries, and schools), pedestrian quality (like sidewalks, vacant lots, and parking lots), and opportunities for local businesses. The study found that only 13 city blocks met their criteria for a “main street."

- Talen became interested in these types of streets in 2016 after reading a New Yorker story in which Adam Gopnik criticized the philosophy that cities should not be built around car-dependent shopping malls, but around lively and pedestrian-friendly streets. “It just kind of upset me and it got me thinking, ‘What is happening to our streets?’” Talen says. So what precludes a block from qualifying as part of a main street? Mainly, a lack of independent businesses and an abundance of chain and e-commerce stores. “If you’re corporate owned,” says Talen, “you don’t really necessarily care what’s going on in the neighborhood. But if you’re the owner, you care about what’s going on in front of your sidewalk.”

- Local businesses found on these streets can help provide what Talen calls neighborhood identify. “If you have a beloved neighborhood store on a main street, that becomes a piece of identity. Nobody is going to use Target as their neighborhood identity.” Creating spaces where residents can build even weak connections, like a coffee shop where the owner knows your name, establishes a sense of community within a city, Talen says. There are also psychological benefits to knowing that storefronts around you are active. --- “Urban designers talk about wanting to have permeable windows so you can see that there’s life going on behind the facade of a building,” says Talen. “That’s important for our psyche, to know that there’s life going on in the city. It’s the whole street being more than car conduits.” Also attributed to active streets: Lower crime rates and the health benefits of walking.

- So what can Chicago do to promote more main streets around the city? First off, recognizing that they’re just as valuable as a park. In terms of tangible steps, the city can create business initiatives to support local entrepreneurs through programs like Retail Thrive Zones, a city effort to help West and South Side businesses with financial incentives. Talen believes this kind of program should be expanded. --- Adjusting city zoning codes could also help local businesses, says Talen, who points to excessive requirements like roadblocks to expanding a business or inattention to the pedestrian-friendliness of streets. “These are all things that the city could certainly do as a matter of policy,” says Talen. “Zoning is policy, so changing those policies to be more supportive of main street retail [can] make it easier for these places to thrive.”

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[mhays]

How do you keep the corporate stores away from a successful area? The only ways I can think of are (a) landlords that do it intentionally, and (b) preservation districts that mandate a lack of chains. For example the Pike Place Market doesn't allow chains to move in, though it does allow stores to stay if they become chains later.

Otherwise, you can support local businesses in a lot of ways, but you can't keep the corporate chains out.

How can you support them? One way is to cut red tape. Seattle does many things badly, but one good thing is that the rash of employment laws generally lets smaller companies (not franchises) off way easier. You can also have one-stop systems for business permits, who can pull in other departments as needed vs. the business owner having to figure it out.

Some small businesses have some economy of scale, for better and worse. Corner groceries tend to be independently owned (in my city at least) but buy from wholesalers that do much of the work of picking what to stock, managing inventory, etc. It's almost like a franchise. These are generally run by immigrants, and they do a ton of good both for the neighborhood and helping newcomers succeed. The downside is that they tend to have very similar stock.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mhays

How do you keep the corporate stores away from a successful area? The only ways I can think of are (a) landlords that do it intentionally, and (b) preservation districts that mandate a lack of chains. For example the Pike Place Market doesn't allow chains to move in, though it does allow stores to stay if they become chains later.

I'm sure you are aware of this but others may not be and it does work (if by "working" you mean simply keeping out chain stores):

Five Things to Know About SF's Formula Retail Policy
By Racked Staff Jun 7, 2013, 3:00pm PDT

1. The San Francisco Planning Code regulates formula retail, a.k.a. "chain stores."
To fall under the formula retail rules, a store must have 11 or more US locations and a recognizable "look." That look could be determined by standardized merchandise, signage, decor, color scheme, uniforms, or trademarks. The city has a handy checklist to determine if a business is a chain store. The formula retail definition excludes certain common commercial uses like professional or medical offices, salons, and gyms.

2. How it works.
Our seven-by-seven city is divided into zoning districts where chain stores are either permitted, not permitted, or conditional. If a chain store wants to set up shop in one of those conditional zoning districts, it has to complete extra paperwork with the Planning Commission. In many cases, the Commission will notify the neighbors of the chain store's intentions, and the neighbors will have an opportunity to object.

3. Formula retail regulation is a relatively new policy.
San Francisco voters passed the original formula retail law in 2006. The San Francisco Chronicle explains that voters extended the law in 2012 to add banks and other financial services to the list of businesses that must seek special permits to open in mom-and-pop-dominated areas.

4. There are conflicting conclusions regarding the policy's effects.
Further proving that you can find support for any argument, small businesses and big box stores have presented conflicting evidence regarding the value of the rule. Last year, the San Francisco Bay Guardian reported that a SF Locally Owned Merchants Alliance study indicated that formula retail cost as many jobs as it created. Bay Area big businesses counter that the rule has unintended consequences, like penalizing homegrown businesses such as Levi's, Gap, and Pet Food Express for their success.

5. More regulation on the horizon.
As we discussed earlier this week, Supervisor London Breed wants to change to the current formula retail rules to ban companies with more than 11 outlets worldwide—or whose parent company has 11 or more stores— from opening in Hayes Valley. (Hypothetical example: Gap would fall under the formula retail rules if it wanted to open a Piperlime store in Hayes Valley because it has more than 11 stores worldwide. It wouldn't matter that there is only one brick-and-mortar Piperlime location . . . .

https://sf.racked.com/2013/6/7/76663...-retail-policy

[ardecila]

Ugh. I agree with the overall thrust of the piece, as Chicago has indeed lost many of its bustling neighborhood strips. The ones that remain basically match up with the city's long-standing Pedestrian Streets zoning overlay, which is heavily North Side-centric. https://danielhertz.files.wordpress....1965003984.png It's too bad the city won't proactively expand the P-street designation to other areas as a guide for new growth.

On the other hand, I don't agree with the hate for chains. Independent businesses aren't ipso facto a generator or a marker of a healthy neighborhood. Also, this has the side effect of vilifying "urban retail" chains that invested in inner-city locations at a time when independent business owners were all fleeing for the suburbs. The article even shows a Payless Shoes in Lincoln Square, for example, and Walgreens has also done this. Villa also comes to mind. Subway and Dunkin Donuts have also provided food options in struggling areas, ones that keep long hours and offer low prices, and they are amazingly flexible when it comes to the spaces they occupy and when it comes to accepting little or no on-site parking (unlike McDonalds, which outside of NYC pretty much demands a drive thru and parking lot for urban locations).

Also, re: the original study of Chicago's main streets... only 13 blocks? What ridiculous bar are they setting? Chicago is a truly massive city and has many neighborhood shopping districts that should qualify, from Wicker Park's hipster Milwaukee Avenue to Little Village's Mexican-oriented 26th St. Now, I wish the city had many more of these, but putting all kinds of ridiculous qualifiers in there doesn't help.