Forgot to mention this yesterday: it was the 31st anniversary of one of the largest and most influential failures in modern urban planning.
Just kidding. I would be torn apart by harpies for heresy if I meant it; the Mall is given credit for saving downtown, or at least preventing a steep decline in the 60s and 70s. But it didn’t save retail. Downtown retail was beyond saving. The Mall kept Nicollet from looking as junky as Hennepin, perhaps; it gave downtown a certain futuristic oh-so-Euro appeal. But retail left anyway. The skyways saved downtown, not the Mall.
But it’s still around, and it looks good. The northeast end is a ghost town, alas – it never recovered from the demolition of the Gateway, and the buildings that went up in the urban renewal program didn’t last. Powers department store was razed, which seemed almost vindictive. Oh, so you can’t stay in business? Well, take this. Otherwise it’s holding up well.
Most of the imitators didn’t work. Even Fargo tried a pedestrian mall, an ill-starred three-block mistake that looked like a demonstration project by Soviet concrete company. All over the country, towns reacted to the loss of downtown retail by squandering their advantages: they razed whatever they could to accommodate cars for parking, and “modernized” their downtown buildings by smothering the lower floors of every building with blank sheets of stone.
Denver’s downtown is one of the exceptions; as I discovered last summer, it has a mall that makes ours look charmless and abandoned. Pedestrian malls can work, I suppose, but the days of I-scale downtown versions are probably gone. We’re told now that two-way streets given pedestrians a sense of safety and vitality. All that congestion and contrary motion. Just like it was 50 years ago, in other words.
It’s difficult to untangle, and there weren’t any good answers. Skyways may have saved downtown, but they killed ground-floor retail – which was leaving anyway. And let’s not forget bad bunker architecture. They took away this . . .
And built this.
Take away the green leaves and the Farmer’s Market – in other words, imagine it the way it looks half the year – and it’s worse. Here's what the entire block looked like:
That's a city.
Just kidding. I would be torn apart by harpies for heresy if I meant it; the Mall is given credit for saving downtown, or at least preventing a steep decline in the 60s and 70s. But it didn’t save retail. Downtown retail was beyond saving. The Mall kept Nicollet from looking as junky as Hennepin, perhaps; it gave downtown a certain futuristic oh-so-Euro appeal. But retail left anyway. The skyways saved downtown, not the Mall.
But it’s still around, and it looks good. The northeast end is a ghost town, alas – it never recovered from the demolition of the Gateway, and the buildings that went up in the urban renewal program didn’t last. Powers department store was razed, which seemed almost vindictive. Oh, so you can’t stay in business? Well, take this. Otherwise it’s holding up well.
Most of the imitators didn’t work. Even Fargo tried a pedestrian mall, an ill-starred three-block mistake that looked like a demonstration project by Soviet concrete company. All over the country, towns reacted to the loss of downtown retail by squandering their advantages: they razed whatever they could to accommodate cars for parking, and “modernized” their downtown buildings by smothering the lower floors of every building with blank sheets of stone.
Denver’s downtown is one of the exceptions; as I discovered last summer, it has a mall that makes ours look charmless and abandoned. Pedestrian malls can work, I suppose, but the days of I-scale downtown versions are probably gone. We’re told now that two-way streets given pedestrians a sense of safety and vitality. All that congestion and contrary motion. Just like it was 50 years ago, in other words.
It’s difficult to untangle, and there weren’t any good answers. Skyways may have saved downtown, but they killed ground-floor retail – which was leaving anyway. And let’s not forget bad bunker architecture. They took away this . . .
And built this.
Take away the green leaves and the Farmer’s Market – in other words, imagine it the way it is half the year – and it’s worse. Here's what the entire block looked like:
Whoa
Either I'm really high on something right now or that's a sweet double post!