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  #21  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 3:39 AM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
Sure you can. Countless suburbs have created true urbanity in nodes, some very substantial. It just takes a lot of demand pressure and a lot of money. Growth management helps because high land prices and low land availability are a major driver.
We've had this discussion in other threads, and I don't think this is even possible. Can you name one of these "countless suburbs which have created true urbanity"?

If someone can name a version of "Southfield" that became a pedestrian/transit oriented community, I'm all ears. In the U.S., at least, such a place doesn't exist. No one has even come close, which is logical, because these places were built for the automobile.
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  #22  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 3:42 AM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Southfield doesn't really share any similarities with Downtown Detroit. They're totally different environments.
Yea, Southfield actually has a stable residential population around its town center, with a higher median income, and a functioning government.

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Troy is much richer and more successful than Southfield, and Troy has tons of very desirable retail space, all along a single corridor.
Yet, even in Troy, there's no semblance of a "new downtown". It's the same old sprawl, but with some new sidewalks and decorative pavers. Of course the sidewalks are devoid of pedestrians, because you cannot turn postwar suburbia into something pedestrian friendly.
Troy is richer, but not sure what you mean by successful. The vacancy rates in Troy are just as high as Southfield. Plus that retail is desirable only because of the office parks that are directly adjacent. Otherwise it'd just be another corridor of strip malls. The only difference is that Southfield's retail is all along Telegraph and Northwestern Highway away from where most of the office parks are. In that sense, Southfield hasn't really capitalized on its commuter population like Troy has. But really that's not a very hard adjustment to make if planned correctly.
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  #23  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 3:47 AM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by animatedmartian View Post
Yea, Southfield actually has a stable residential population around its town center, with a higher median income, and a functioning government.
No, Southfield has a declining residential population, lower median income than downtown Detroit, and high-tax, poor service government.
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Originally Posted by animatedmartian View Post
Troy is richer, but not sure what you mean by successful. The vacancy rates in Troy are just as high as Southfield. Plus that retail is desirable only because of the office parks that are directly adjacent.
The retail success has nothing to do with office space. It's because Troy is located next to the richest communities in Michigan.

Somerset is wildly successful because of Bloomfield/Birmingham, not because of adjacent, half-empty 70's era office blocks. And office space is irrelevant to creating a walkable community.
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Originally Posted by animatedmartian View Post
The only difference is that Southfield's retail is all along Telegraph and Northwestern Highway away from where most of the office parks are. In that sense, Southfield hasn't really capitalized on its commuter population like Troy has. But really that's not a very hard adjustment to make if planned correctly.
No, the difference is that Troy is rich, desirable, growing, and has a strong tax base, and Southfield is none of these things.
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  #24  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 4:04 AM
mhays mhays is offline
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
We've had this discussion in other threads, and I don't think this is even possible. Can you name one of these "countless suburbs which have created true urbanity"?

If someone can name a version of "Southfield" that became a pedestrian/transit oriented community, I'm all ears. In the U.S., at least, such a place doesn't exist. No one has even come close, which is logical, because these places were built for the automobile.
DC and LA have a variety of examples, probably the most of any US region.

Locally, Downtown Bellevue is about 60% true urbanity, with sizeable pockets where it's 100%. Starting with the boom of the late 80s, nearly everything new has been urban, albeit with more parking than is common in many true city centers. The parking has generally been underground. I mean buildings go straight up from the sidewalks, large blocks have been broken into smaller ones, and there's a mix of office, housing, hotel, government, public, etc.

Plus smaller ones. In my region, Downtown Kirkland, Mercer Island, and Redmond are examples of the six-story version. Again most new buildings are up to the sidewalks and along certain streets they're lined with retail.
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  #25  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 4:05 AM
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Originally Posted by Cleveland Brown View Post
Apples and oranges. Sure, Detroit is poor, people and stores are leaving in most of the city, BUT vacancy rates in Downtown/Midtown are some of the lowest in the region. Within the last five years DT Detroit has added more than 2,000 hotel rooms into the market and nightly rates are still rising. Downtown/Midtown residential population and per capita income is up (despite being down virtually everywhere else in the city).
Detroit's CBD office market is smaller than Southfield's (13,000,000 compared to 17,000,000 square feet respectively). It should be lower or else it'd still be a sign a still somewhat weakening downtown.
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Buildings abandoned for nearly thirty years have come back online and other long rundown buildings are being purchased for more than a song. And now surface lots, which even at downtown's worst is not comparable to Southfield's acres of surface parking, are being developed.
It seems like you're only counting a very small area of Downtown Detroit.

I have a hard time believing that this area is smaller than Southfield's town center and an even harder time believing that that's less parking space. What, only two lots are being developed right now? Out of the entirety of the many parking lots there are? And how is that any different from developing on Southfield's parking lots? It's not exactly a challenge to develop on what pretty much is open space.

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  #26  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 5:12 AM
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Office broker stats don't cover everything. Mostly they do buildings that have been on the leasing market at some point. Not government buildings, older owner-occupied buildings, small buildings, etc. Based on those two figures it's within the margin of variation as to which is largest.

But if Downtown was larger that would be a sign of Downtown strength, obviously. You worded that oddly.
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  #27  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 5:45 AM
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Originally Posted by animatedmartian View Post
Detroit's CBD office market is smaller than Southfield's (13,000,000 compared to 17,000,000 square feet respectively). It should be lower or else it'd still be a sign a still somewhat weakening downtown.
That makes no sense. Applying your rough figures to the vacancy rates in the MLive story (Detroit 26.5; Southfield 29.7) shows that Southfield has the same square footage vacant as Detroit - plus another 1.6 million more empty square feet, roughly the same size as One Detroit Center (or three of the Ren-Cen office towers). If Detroit and Southfield had the same size office market (17 million SF), Southfield would have an additional .5 million square feet of vacant office space over Detroit.

Quote:
Originally Posted by animatedmartian
It seems like you're only counting a very small area of Downtown Detroit.

I have a hard time believing that this area is smaller than Southfield's town center and an even harder time believing that that's less parking space. What, only two lots are being developed right now? Out of the entirety of the many parking lots there are? And how is that any different from developing on Southfield's parking lots? It's not exactly a challenge to develop on what pretty much is open space.

One, your boundries are odd and include parts of Corktown, Midtown/Cass Corridor, Eastern Market, and Lafayette Park. Secondly I've zoomed both of these google maps to the same level.

Downtown Detroit: https://www.google.com/maps/preview#...!2m1!1e3&fid=7

Southfield Town Center area: https://www.google.com/maps/preview#...!2m1!1e3&fid=7

You're right on two points (1) Downtown Detroit has far too many surface lots and (2) the Town Center area is smaller. However, despite all of Detroit's failures, the same area in Detroit, even in it's gutted state is far denser and contains far more residential, retail, and office space than a similar area in Southfield's Town Center area.
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  #28  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 6:28 AM
hudkina hudkina is offline
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The area in question isn't even remotely as large as downtown. It would be about as ambitious as the plan to develop the area around the new Red Wings arena.

Honestly, it wouldn't be that difficult to convert this area into something resembling an "urban" district, and by "urban" I mean places like Bellevue, Bethesda, Buckhead, etc.



Obviously it would still be auto-oriented, and obviously it would need plenty of parking garages, but it's not that hard to imagine something like a Bethesda or a Buckhead, with a mix of residential, office, retail, etc.
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  #29  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 6:44 AM
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Originally Posted by hudkina View Post
Obviously it would still be auto-oriented, and obviously it would need plenty of parking garages, but it's not that hard to imagine something like a Bethesda or a Buckhead, with a mix of residential, office, retail, etc.
It is hard, though, to imagine a Bethesda or Buckhead without metro rail service.
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  #30  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 6:45 AM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
Office broker stats don't cover everything. Mostly they do buildings that have been on the leasing market at some point. Not government buildings, older owner-occupied buildings, small buildings, etc. Based on those two figures it's within the margin of variation as to which is largest.

But if Downtown was larger that would be a sign of Downtown strength, obviously. You worded that oddly.
What I meant was that Downtown Detroit would be quicker to fill up because it is smaller. The vacancy rate drops at an apparent faster rate than the suburban market; ie, a company taking up 100,000 sq ft downtown would be more significant than that same 100,000 feet out in Southfield.



Anyway, the point is I don't actually think that a newly developed downtown in Southfield would necessarily fail because of the decreasing vacancy rate in downtown Detroit or because of the already present Royal Oak and Birmingham downtowns.

I guess I believe Metro Detroit's economy to be large enough to accommodate all of it and that a likely reason for Southfield's supposed new downtown to fail is because it wouldn't be aesthetically pleasing?

This looks ugly as shit....


...and instead should look something like this.



Obviously not to the same caliber since I'm sure the above picture would be way expensive and slow to develop with current market conditions (and a few other obvious differences since this image is of a development in San Francisco), but this was created out of vacant land and I don't see how it'd be that hard to do the same except over parking lots in a fairly busy suburb.

A lot of Metro Detroit projects do seem to fail quite simply because they're done without a lack of vision and ambition. People aren't going to be drawn to the cheapest developments possible. Get some decent architects (I'm not asking even for starchitect status, just people who know what looks good) and developers and maybe people will actually be drawn to the area.

Edit: Actually, something a lot like Hudkina's drawing. Just with dense development.

Last edited by animatedmartian; Nov 6, 2013 at 7:00 AM.
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  #31  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 7:18 AM
hudkina hudkina is offline
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BTW, Lathrup Village which is a city within Southfield and directly north and east of this development has a median family income of $93,000. Beverly Hills which is less than 2 miles north of this development has a median family income of $116,000. There are eight Census Tracts in Southfield north of 10 Mile and west of Lahser. Of those, three have median family incomes of more than $85,000. Those are north and west of this development. Three have median family incomes between $60,000 and $70,000. Two have median family incomes of $50,000.

Again, even if areas of Southfield are becoming Section 8 dumping grounds, the areas surrounding this development are still well above average when it comes to income, and despite what many think, these neighborhoods aren't losing ground. Lathrup Village will always be an upper-middle class city, and many of the Southfield neighborhoods around it will be as well.
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  #32  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 7:27 AM
hudkina hudkina is offline
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Originally Posted by fflint View Post
It is hard, though, to imagine a Bethesda or Buckhead without metro rail service.
When, Detroit gets its RTA up and running, it wouldn't be that difficult to connect this area to a rapid transit line. This area would be served by an offshoot of a Woodward line that runs along 8 Mile, turning north at the Lodge and continuing along Northwestern Hwy until that ends.
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  #33  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 11:45 AM
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At the very least, there'd be many multi-level parking garages. Even in Royal Oak and Birmingham, there's a couple of public parking garages and many of the high-rise residential structures have the first several floors dedicated to parking. Even in Downtown Detroit there seems to be a higher amount of parking garages relative to other cities.

It doesn't really seem like a lack of transit has really hindered development, per se, but no one area has really reached any critical mass of density to cause significant problems. It isn't difficult to find parking in Royal Oak although they only started to charge for parking less than a few years ago.

Though certainly the preferred option is for transit if it's expected for these areas to support (or generate) higher populations and traffic.
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  #34  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 1:18 PM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
DC and LA have a variety of examples, probably the most of any US region.

Locally, Downtown Bellevue is about 60% true urbanity, with sizeable pockets where it's 100%.
I can't think of one example in these places. Downtown Bellevue is a downtown district. It was never built as postwar sprawl on cornfields, like Southfield.

Places like Bethesda and Pasadena are downtown districts. They don't share any historical similarities with somewhere like Southfield. Southfield was built 100% car-oriented, in the 60's and 70's. There is no "base" of prewar built form, so there is nothing to grow. You would need to demolish everything and start over from scratch.
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  #35  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 1:25 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by hudkina View Post
BTW, Lathrup Village which is a city within Southfield and directly north and east of this development has a median family income of $93,000. Beverly Hills which is less than 2 miles north of this development has a median family income of $116,000. There are eight Census Tracts in Southfield north of 10 Mile and west of Lahser. Of those, three have median family incomes of more than $85,000. Those are north and west of this development. Three have median family incomes between $60,000 and $70,000. Two have median family incomes of $50,000.

Again, even if areas of Southfield are becoming Section 8 dumping grounds, the areas surrounding this development are still well above average when it comes to income, and despite what many think, these neighborhoods aren't losing ground. Lathrup Village will always be an upper-middle class city, and many of the Southfield neighborhoods around it will be as well.
None of the areas you're describing have Section 8 apartments. These are different communities, and not really relevant to whether such a development would work.

Beverly Hills will not utilize a Southfield "downtown". There are major demographic differences between the cities, and Beverly Hills is essentially an extension of Birmingham. The far-north part of Southfield is Birmingham schools and not really part of the potential target market either.

A good illustration of why this wouldn't work is the Southfield library. Southfield's library is fantastic and possibly the best in Michigan. Yet when Beverly Hills lost its contract with Birmingham library (which is terrible), the city negotiated an agreement with Southfield library, yet no one visited the library. The city then cancelled the agreement and just had no library whatsoever before again coming to agreement with Birmingham.

I think it's class moreso than race, but you aren't going to get that wealth belt in mid Oakland County (Bloomfield, Birmingham, Franklin, Beverly Hills, etc.) to utilize a Southfield mixed-use development. Your target market would be Southfield and NW Detroit.
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  #36  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 2:56 PM
hudkina hudkina is offline
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That doesn't even make sense. If someone in Beverly Hills or Lathrup Village or the upper middle-class neighborhoods of Southfield (or even places like Huntington Woods for that matter) want to shop at an Apple Store or a Nordstrom (not that they'd open there), they're not going to say "Oh my, Southfield has some poor areas, I'll waste an additional 20 minutes travel time and head way out to Troy or Novi because I don't want to be seen in a city that has a few poor neighborhoods." They're going to say, "Hey, I want to buy a new winter coat. I bet the Nordstrom down the street has some great coats!"

If I live at Evergreen and 13 Mile, and I can drive 5 minutes to a Nordstrom or an Apple Store or a Pottery Barn or whatever hell high-end store I want to waste my money at, I'll do it over driving 15 minutes to Troy or Novi. People aren't as class/race oriented as you'd think, especially when talking about a mid/high end shopping/entertainment area in a upper middle-class area. The "poor" people will still continue to use the Northland area for their shopping needs. The "rich" people in the area could now have a closer option.

You are severely underestimating the wealth in the areas directly adjacent to this site (i.e. the number of people who are closer to this area than either Novi or Troy), and the fact that this particular area isn't already well-served by retail makes it more appealing than you'd might think.

This sort of reminds me of the Hill in Allen Park. Granted, the Hill is definitely in a more working-class/middle-class area, but people probably thought adding massive amounts of retail in that area was a bad idea. People in the area would be scared that poor city residents would come down and scare all the white people away.
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  #37  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 4:24 PM
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The proposal kind of reminds me of a watered down version of Rosemomt, IL with the exception that it's not connected to commuter rail, or rapid transit, or a busy airport, or super concentration of hotels, or pre-existing TOD development. And even the Rosemomt development took some seeding time to fill up. Doesn't matter how many jobs or universities are nearby. It must succeed out of convenience and be in a growing area. Even if I worked in an office tower nearby, it will still be an annoyance to have to drive to this or walk along an arterial road.
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  #38  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 4:38 PM
mhays mhays is offline
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
I can't think of one example in these places. Downtown Bellevue is a downtown district. It was never built as postwar sprawl on cornfields, like Southfield.

Places like Bethesda and Pasadena are downtown districts. They don't share any historical similarities with somewhere like Southfield. Southfield was built 100% car-oriented, in the 60's and 70's. There is no "base" of prewar built form, so there is nothing to grow. You would need to demolish everything and start over from scratch.
Downtown Bellevue was farmland until after WWII when a bridge crossed Lake Washington from Seattle, then it was built as low-density suburbia much like Southfield. Most of what's there now is second generation. It's precisely the model we're talking about.
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  #39  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 5:53 PM
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True

If we looked further afield maybe there are examples? How about Australia or New Zealand?
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  #40  
Old Posted Nov 6, 2013, 6:05 PM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
Downtown Bellevue was farmland until after WWII when a bridge crossed Lake Washington from Seattle, then it was built as low-density suburbia much like Southfield. Most of what's there now is second generation. It's precisely the model we're talking about.
Bellevue, WA is nothing like Southfield, MI.

Bellevue has a downtown. It's semi-walkable. It was founded as a community in 1869.

Southfield has no downtown, is completely unwalkable, and was founded in 1958.

Just because sprawl came to Bellevue after WWII doesn't mean it wasn't a viable, pre-automobile community. Southfield was nothing but fields before WWII, hence has no pre-automobile backbone. Obviously a suburb like Bellevue with a semblance of a pre-automobile built form has something on which it can build a future of semi-urbanity. Southfield has no such luck, IMO.

Birmingham, MI would be a Metro Detroit equivalent of Bellevue, WA. As in Bellevue, they're building upon the assets of an existing commercial core.
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