Quick Look at Kansas City’s Power & Light District

While returning to St. Louis from Kansas last week I asked my friend, Seattle Architect Rich Kenney, to exit the highway so we could do a quick spin through Kansas City’s Power & Light District.

Offering over a half million square feet, The Kansas City Power & Light District is the mid-west’s premier entertainment epicenter. With more than 45 unique and captivating retail outlets, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues, the District offers something for everyone. Located in the heart of downtown, this vibrant, new eight-block neighborhood links the Convention Center to the Sprint Arena and is bringing the beat back to Kansas City.

World-class attractions include the Midland Theatre by AMC, The Mainstreet Theatre, and the KC Live! Entertainment District.

As we didn’t even get out of the car this post is simply an introduction.  I need to return and spend some real time there to get a better understanding of the development.

My interest in P&L is two-fold.  First it is a major multi-block development in a major city, reason enough.  The developer, Cordish, is the selected developer to build St. Louis’ Ballpark Village.

The purple area is the Sprint Arena and the blue is the Power & Light District.  The central business district is just to the North.

Kansas City’s downtown is like many  – surrounded by highways.  St. Louis had an additional highway planned that would have cut off downtown from the city to the West & North. Thankfully it never got built.

The official map for P&L, above, shows the many small businesses as well as the extensive parking.  The did a good job concealing the parking structures from view.

Above is a view looking East on 14th between Main & Walnut.  One of the four valet zones seemed totally unnecessary on a Thursday afternoon.  But then again, on-street parking is rare.

A block East we get a better view of the Sprint Center at Grand.  Here on one side of 14th is one of the rare spots with on-street parking.  The store on the left is a grocery store.

Going East on 12th the transition into the P&L is thankfully subtle.  Thus the district connects nicely with the adjacent blocks to the West.  This is likely due to the desire to attract conventioneers from the convention center.

One of the criticisms I had heard was visible from the car as we stopped at a light — the brick sidewalks are already getting uneven.  The edge of the man hole cover, above, is a trip hazard.  The person that creates brick sidewalks is the person that has never rode a wheelchair on them.

The buildings are mostly new and nicely varied.  Different colors of brick are used as well as metal.  The detailing gives a contempory look & feel to the area — much better than a fake retro look.  The interior of one block is a 21+ area only.

Again, I need to return and experience P&L on different days of the week and at different times to get a full understanding.  I hear it is so successful that other formerly popular areas are now short on customers.

– Steve Patterson

Kansas Town Retains Pedestrian Mall, Concrete Awnings

St. Louis will soon see the North 14th Street Pedestrian Mall go away.  It will become, simply, North 14th Street as it was prior to March 1977. Cities all over the country have gone through similar projects to undo what was largely a failed experiment conducted by planners.  Often these car-free pedestrian zones quickly became pedestrian-free zones.

In 2007 I learned of Atchison Kansas from Bonnie Johnson, assistant professor in urban planning at the University of Kansas, in nearby Lawrence Kansas.  Unfortunately I was unable to visit Atchison KS on that trip.  So what is so compelling about a town of 10,000 people on the bank of the Missouri river?  Their downtown pedestrian mall.

Last week I finally made it to Atchison Kansas to see it for myself.  I knew in 2007 they were preparing to update the pedestrian mall.  Not remove it, but update it.   This town embraces their failed pedestrian mall.  The update is now complete.

The pedestrian mall is 3 blocks of Commercial Street just West of the Missouri Mississippi River (view in Google maps):

The mall has it’s origin in disaster:

Atchison became known as “the city that refused to die” after rebuilding from two flash floods that swept through the downtown in 1958. The devastation of the floods hastened the replacement of many of the oldest commercial buildings and led to the construction of the pedestrian mall that today is the heart of the downtown district.  (source)

But worse than cutting off traffic in front of the storefronts are the concrete canopies running along both sides of the mall:

The above picture was from before the current remake.  They had the perfect opportunity to reopen the street to traffic and more importantly to remove these horrible structures.  Instead they got new sidewalks and benches:

The grass is green and the trees are mature.  The hard surfacing underfoot is no longer dated looking.  But those ghastly concrete canopies remain:

In decades past planners tried to create a uniform look for commercial areas — much like the new open-air suburban malls would have.  But as you can see the former bank building, center above, is ruined by the canopy passing in front of it.  Big surprise, it is vacant.

Many of the storefronts are vacant or at least appear vacant. It is hard to tell because they all have entrances off the rear alley behind the buildings.  One active business had a sign on their mall entrance directing people to the alley entry.

So customers arrive and park in one of the parking lots behind the buildings (above) and then enter the rear-facing entrance (below).  Brilliant plan!

Above is the same alley in another block.  On the left the trucks are parked in “front” of an auto parts store with another parking lot on the right.  The Commercial Street entrances are secondary to the rear alley entrances.  They had the chance to undo this mistake but instead they put in new sidewalks and street furnishings.

The cross streets have always continued through so if you are walking the mall you encounter traffic just as you would if you were walking along a normal street with traffic and on-street parking.

The blandness of the uniform canopies and signage is the opposite of what makes for a vibrant street — varied awnings, storefronts and signage.

Atchison City Manager Kelly DeMeritt:

DeMeritt looks forward to the renovation of Atchison’s open-air, pedestrian mall built in the 1960s. “The mall will give a huge economic boom to our retail district,” she says. “It will be the last piece of the puzzle that really will finish the downtown.”  (source)

Economic boost?  Finished?  Translation: another 40+ years of unrealized potential which is a pity because Atchison is a cute town.  DeMeritt is younger than the mall.

Just up the hill to the North of downtown is a great old neighborhood.

Small town commercial districts can be quite charming.  They can also get screwed up to the point they no longer funtion as they should.  But rather than admitting a prior decision was a mistake, they throw good money after bad.

As a general rule I prefer spaces that have pedestrians, cars, bikes, scooters, and transit all balanced and mixed.  Spaces with large numbers of pedestrians but none of the others are rare but pleasant when they do occur. But car-free spaces without pedestrians are boring.  Spaces dominated by the car to the point that pedestrians & cyclists are absent are horrible.

– Steve Patterson

Tearing Out A Pedestrian Mall

Soon we will see crews doing to St. Louis’ North 14th Street what I saw yesterday in the town of Rockford Illinois:  ripping out a tired pedestrian mall  (Map).

Crews began ripping out the two remaining blocks last month.

There were 48 retailers, restaurants and salons on the mall when it opened in 1975. Today only two of those 48 are still there. Five years later, in 1980, retail establishments on those four blocks were already being decimated as shoppers flocked to shopping centers and the CherryVale Mall that opened in 1973.   (source)

The same story can be told in places where the mall was seen as the way to lure shoppers away from new open-air & enclosed malls in the suburbs.  Rockford appears to have been on the cutting edge with efforts to revitalize their downtown.  Cutting edge planning has been destructive to cities and their downtowns.  Revitalization efforts today are often simply to undo past mistakes.  Rockford’s retail area is now firmly embeded in the think ring of sprawl.  The 21st century version will be different than it was 75 years ago but also different than it has been over the last 30 years.

I had lunch inside the restaurant you see pictured with the outdoor seating.  I asked my waitress what she thought of the mall going away.  She didn’t want to see it go. I should not the mall was older than she was.

She was skeptical of the plans for having traffic on the street.  “I hope it works out,” she said.  Indeed, I plan to return after the Main Stret reopens.

– Steve Patterson

The Streets of Tehran

Like most of you I’ve been following the events unfolding in Tehran, Iran. The images of conflict are often heartbreaking to view.  But the urban planner in me can’t help but notice details unrelated to the subject of the images —- the scale of the streets, the well marked crosswalks, the architecture, etc.  A couple of pics showed an intersection along a major Boulevard.  The traffic signals had a countdown timer to show drivers how much longer the green light would be green or how much longer the red would be red.

I pulled up Tehran on Google Maps.  Wow, had no idea:

Transit lines, lots of parks.  A tight street network.  Unfortunately no Google Street View.  I never realized the scale of the city before.

My next stop was Wikipedia’s entry on Tehran:

Area
– City 686[citation needed] km2 (265 sq mi)

Population (2006)
– Density 10,327.6/km2 (26,748.3/sq mi)
– Urban 7,088,287
– Metro 20,413,348

That is one dense city!  For comparison I pulled up New York City:

Area
– City 468.9 sq mi (1,214.4 km2)

Population (July 1, 2007)
– City 8,310,212
– Density 27,264/sq mi (10,527/km2)
– Urban 18,223,567
– Metro 18,815,988

Both Tehran & New York City have over four times the population per square mile compared to the City of St. Louis. Of course we have a greater density than numerous other cities.  Still there is a minimum density required to achieve that cosmopolitan feel.  Not sure what the magic number is but I know we are below it.

With density comes active streets.  Granted,  Tehran’s streets are too active right now and in the worst possible way.  But street vendors, bustling storefronts along sidewalks rather than busy malls or big box stores.  Good mass transit becomes a necessity for a dense city to function.

I hope the people of Tehran, Iran and all the Middle East can find peace.

– Steve Patterson

Placeless Sprawl With Names Evoking A Sense of Place

While vacationing in Seattle I visited Seattle’s oldest area, known as Pioneer Square.

The above is obviously not a late 19th Century historic area in downtown Seattle.  Instead it is a typical highway side auto-centric center located an hour or so North of Seattle near I-5  (map added on 3/27/09).  But the horse graphic on the sign gives you that pioneer feeling…

The real Pioneer Square has character and no gas pumps.  I always find it interesting the names given to characterless sprawl.  Does a familiar name on a cheap backlit sign make sprawl more ascceptable?

In the St. Louis region we see the Arch invoked all over .  Does that give these meaningless areas a sense of place?  Hardly.

One of my favorites is the Eureka Towne Center:

In the sense of pure commerce the above is the center of Eureka, MO with a Wal-Mart and a host of chain stores. Sad on so many levels.  Sad that Main Street is no longer valued.  Sad that sprawl like this exists from coast to coast.  Sad that the public has fully accepted this form of developmemt.  Sad that few see the folly of calling it the “towne center.”

We have real places in America but for the last half century we’ve become so accustomed to sprawl.  Those of us who abhore sprawl are then left to retreat to the remaining authentic places for living in sprawl is no life at all.