I live in an historic California Gold Rush town. Our “downtown” is really more of an historic district; consisting of about three blocks of 1850s-60s era buildings. The businesses occupying them are mostly restaurants, bars, boutiques, antique shops, and that sort of thing. In other words it’s more of a touristy area, or a place to go bar hopping Saturday night, rather than a major shopping area. During COVID, the city has been closing the main street through the historic district so restaurants could have outdoor seating. It seems to be going fairly well, although one café that had been along time fixture did close. The primary shopping area would be the suburban strip malls in the ever expanding suburban blob that is the Sacramento metro area.
I think you’re wrong on this…even if I hope otherwise. The retail-apocalypse is a real thing and COVID sent what was already a major downward trend into overdrive.
Office Spaces in the Loop will may never truly refill. Many companies are shifting to a permanent semi-remote workforce and once they realize the savings, they’ll get addicted to not paying for cubes, electricity, security and internet. Just another way to shift costs onto the workers. Many of the landlords in the loop are talking about rearranging their floorspace to become more of a destination for workers, desperately trying to lure tenants back by shifting away from office space towards more amenities. This means a lower critical mass of office drones and it also means many restaurants and bars will be moving inside the highrises and off the street level.
The Mag Mile and a lot of the old neighborhood shopping corridors are probably never coming back. Even before COVID you couldn’t keep the storefronts full. Lincoln Ave, Clark St, Milwaukee Ave, Wells St, North Ave, Rush and Division all are looking at upwards of 40-50% vacancy right now. In the Loop it’s not any better. State Street is a nightmare.
I’m hoping that we figure this out, certainly we’re not unique, but the days of there being 10,000+ shoppers strolling up and down Michigan every day is never coming back. Maybe something different will draw the crowds, but it’s by no means a given.
You’re describing two different phenomenon here.
- The “retail apocalypse” where traditional brick and mortar retail stores, malls and even big box store chains have been failing over the past several decades.
- Transition to “remote work” (accelerated by COVID-19) where companies are transitioning away from the old models of hundreds or thousands of employees warehoused in cubicle farms inside an office tower or sprawling corporate campus.
I can see trend 1 being exacerbated by 2. Retail and shops tend to be in “high traffic” areas. What happens when you don’t have high traffic areas because people don’t have to go anywhere?
I think in the smaller towns of the US, the downtowns are still generally important, with maybe another alternate commercial area around whatever any local big-box store might be (Wal-Mart, Tractor Supply, etc…).
In mid sized to larger cities, it’s a different story; population densities and car ownership/use are such that when “new” stores to an area moved in, it often wasn’t attractive to move into the downtown area, because of parking issues, small store issues, etc… when they could relatively cheaply build a new full-sized store somewhere else nearby.
The tl:dr is that if everyone’s driving, it often makes more commercial sense to build a new store elsewhere than to shoehorn one into the existing downtown. The exception is in larger built-up areas where there isn’t any affordable or large enough real-estate close in. In that case, retailers DO put in smaller locations in built up areas, as they don’t have an alternative.
You see this somewhat in the UK even, with smaller stores in city centres, and larger ones in specific shopping centers or on the outskirts of the urban area. In the US, retailers just mostly skip the inner city ones when they can.
You don’t have to go that far back. 1995 would be fine.
Especially as far as bookstores went, Boston and Cambridge used to have an embarrassment of riches. The then-newly added Waterstone’s at Essex Street had three and a half stories of stories. And the Harvard Bookstore/Cafe was right across the street. Shortly after that the Internet killed off first the used bookstores in Harvard Square and on Charles Street, then most of the independent and chain bookstores.
Boston’s still better than a lot of cities. You still have a large Barnes and Noble at the Prudential Center (the only B&N I know of that’s still IN an indoor mall), the Trident bookstore and Cafe nearby, and at least two big used bookstores downtown, even if all the other ones are gone (And Harvard Square in Cambridge still has the huge Harvard Bookstore and the Harvard Coop).
The town I currently live in has Route 1 going through it as a “downtown”. There’s lots of shopping (include a B&N and an indoor mall), but it’s not that hospitable. There are two “downtowns” aside from that. One has Town Hall, a Library, convenience stores, several churches, and restaurants (including lots of pizza places), as well as hair dressers, karate studios, etc. The other has the post office, churches, convenience stores, restaurants and other businesses. Neither is really big, but they have what you need and want. No clothing or department stores, though. The bookstores closed down, and so did the hardware store.
My hometown in New Jersey used to have a movie theater, two department stores, a supermarket, a newsstand, the library, a pharmacy, several banks, one of the schools, and bus service to Manhattan. That’s all gone now. We still have the police and fire stations and rescue squad, a couple of ethnic markets and convenience stores, several restaurants and a few businesses. The newsstand lasted longer than most, only closing a couple of years ago. The schools and the library moved away from downtown to where there was more room. All but one of the banks are gone. A lot of the stores my mother used to be able to walk to to get things or pay bills (the phone company, a big Insurance Company office, etc.) folded up long ago.
For the most part downtown New Orleans is very busy, but there are pockets that aren’t.
Saugus? Must be? You don’t have to answer, I just wanted to see if I am right. Because it sure sounds like Saugus to me.
FWIW, I grew up in Melrose, moved to the country, and now I’m back in Malden.
And our downtown is (well, was) in the process of revitalizing and hopefully will continue to do so post-covid.
Bingo.
I lived in Melrose for a while. Melrose is one of the relatively few towns with a real downtown. You can also commute right into Boston from downtown, which is a definite plus.
They may be “revitalizing” Melrose’s downtown, but it never died, as was the case with some other towns.
I meant Malden is revitalizing. Melrose has been strong since the 90s, though as a kid it was pretty bleak. Back then, Melrose wouldn’t allow any liquor licenses, which meant the fanciest restaurant was Melrose House of Pizza*. Trust me when I say you wouldn’t recognize Melrose’s downtown of 1986.
*Stearns and Hill had the only one, somehow grandfathered in from way back.
I grew up in La Grange, living there from '73-'90. There used to be even more, such as department stores, shoe stores, a sporting goods store, a musical instrument store, a stationery shop, stamp and coin shop, photography studio, bridal shops. Sadly, mostly all long gone.
My hometown is Kingsville, TX, a small town of about 25K to 30K over the past few decades. When I was growing up in the 80s and early 90s, downtown was a run down area, with most of the businesses barely hanging on and usually frequented by “old people.” All the teenagers would hang out at the mall. Downtown was where my dad and his friends would hang out back in the 50s, not where my friends would go.
Now it’s come full circle. The mall is no longer a mall, and only has a couple of “old people” stores like the tractor supply and a dollar store. All the kids are hanging out downtown again, which is reviving with new stores like coffee shops. Many of the old businesses are becoming popular again, including an actual old school pharmacy / soda fountain that hasn’t been this popular since LBJ was president (based on what I hear from the older lifelong residents).
That’s extremely similar to the Chicago NW suburb I grew up in. I used to hang out at the stamp & coin shop a lot and haven"t thought about the stationary shop in years. The corner pharmacy that got a lot of my allowance money has been a Panera for ages.
Indeed; I moved into the area about the time you left, and there was definitely a greater diversity of stores in the past. I was particularly saddened when the hobby shop closed a couple of years ago – I guess that the owner had sold the building, and was planning to close the shop and retire, but then passed away just before closing the store.
My town’s downtown is essentially a “road downtown”. Stores and buildings were placed on either side of the main road through town, with parking lots behind. It used to be a mix of schools, churches, grocery stores, soda shop, library, movie theatre, dime store, hobby shop, shoe repair/barber, gift shop, hardware store, bakery, banks, and local suit/dress stores all laid out along three miles. Most people would drive downtown and park towards one end, shop around, then move the car towards the other end, and shop there.
Now the megastores in surrounding suburbs have drawn the business away and what is left of the downtown is mainly restaurants and bars that open and close with sad regularity. And medical centers. One large company has renovated buildings with the intent to open offices - but that now doesn’t look it will come to fruition since their employees are “working from home”.
The city government has tried several things to bring business back in. They’re using one of the outlying richer suburbs as a model.
- They’ve closed a parking lot and used the land to build a large block of condominiums. Oops, they had to build a parking garage to restore the lost space.
- Then they spruced up the remaining parking lots with iron fences and flowers. Oops, those fences took away from the parking area. Oops, they needed money to do that so they installed parking meters - which meant that people deserted the downtown even more quickly.
- Now the city is blocking off some of the traffic lanes on either side of the main road - for “farmer’s markets” and such. Some of traffic lanes have had bike lanes carved out, or sidewalks widened, which reduces the streets from two lanes to one. Which will drive more people away from coming downtown.
And…
Sorry, this is turning into a rant. So I’ll leave it at that.
Our little suburb (population about 5,000 - developed when the railway came through in the 1890’s) - two miles away from any other shopping area, and six miles from “downtown”: in the 50’s the main street had two drug stores (one with a soda fountain - a hangout for high schoolers), a small supermarket, two banks, two barbershops, a hairdresser, two restaurants, a shore store, a shoe repair place, two hardware stores, and a few others I can’t remember (and two churches).
Today - no supermarket (just a fruit/vegetable store, with grocery “necessities” and beer), one bank, one barbershop/hairdresser, three restaurants, and no shoe/repair or hardware stores. The two churches are still there. We do now have a bookstore. But almost all the necessities are still there.
It’s a long walk today to the nearest big supermarket if you don’t mind carrying groceries for 20-30 minutes (or a 5-minute drive), and/or a 20-30 minute drive to the nearest Walmart and shopping centre.
In the 50’s, as a treat, we would be taken on the streetcar for the 45-minute ride “downtown” with department stores, Santa Claus, and nice restaurants. As an additional treat (at an extra cost) we would take the 15-minute train ride home (I can still smell the cinders from the steam engines).
Some downtown department stores are still open - but not the same as many years ago - likewise the restaurants are mostly fast food today. But downtown is still “lively” during non-Covid times, as is our little suburb’s main street.
My town of 40,000 has multiple downtowns. The primary downtown is a mile long strip on the main drag through town. There are 3 other downtown type areas all centered around train stations, we have a lot of stations.
Most of the downtown activity is restaurant based, more restaurants than you can shake a stick at, but we still have some decent boutiques, and of course, hair and nail salons in abundance.