Quote:
Originally Posted by poconoboy61
To make that area truly urban, Central would need to be made more pedestrian friendly. There are so many dead zones along Central. Crossing the street can be a deathmatch. I understand that light rail transformed Central from a six lane street to a four lane street, but it is still too auto centric. I would propose lowering the speed limit on Central to 30 MPH and taking away the curb lane either for a protected bike lane or parallel parking all the way from downtown to Camelback. Install HAWK signals and speed tables.
It's hard to get excited about the prospect of multi story apartments and urban style box stores in an area that's not actually pedestrian or bike friendly. It's kind of like Houston and Atlanta where there are shiny new high rises everywhere and urban Targets, yet the areas are still dependent on auto traffic.
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The fact that Midtown was built in such a faux-urban style is why there's so much opportunity for redevelopment - office-to-apartment conversions, ground level renovations to include retail, building out surface parking lots, etc. I totally agree that Midtown is pretty hostile as a pedestrian environment right now, but much of that is because there isn't much of a 'there' there. It has a few cool restaurants and bars but they're all scattered along the stretch of Central, so there's really no catalyst for foot traffic. It would help the pedestrian experience if there were nodes of restaurants, bars, shops.
Unfortunately, I can't see the City ever giving away any more of the ROW for things like parallel parking. I think business owners are still not pleased about the impact light rail had during construction and I imagine they weren't much in favor of reducing the travel lanes. So, making it more conducive to walking is going to need to come from redevelopment projects that hopefully provide large sidewalks, plenty of shade, etc.
I actually think Midtown could really function well as the urban residential core. Most major cities have CBD's that are separate from the majority of actual city neighborhoods. Phoenix's attempt at making the CBD into a liveable area makes selling an urban lifestyle much harder, since the goals of residents completely clashes with those of bar/club owners, for example. If the main CBD became the cultural, entertainment, commerce and civic center of the City and Midtown the residential and shopping, I think both would complement each really well instead of playing an endless game of poaching each others' law firms to fill up their towers.
Anyway, it would be great to see new residential projects built, and for more struggling offices to consider converting. The idea of WVB ever becoming the shopping center it's zoned to be is pretty unrealistic... I think a Midtown with a larger population would work much better. There is just so much more space to both build out the big box stores and to provide the amount of parking needed for them to be successful in an urban setting.
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