Time to freshen up 1990s urban improvements?

[llamaorama]

For a lot of cities like Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, etc, there were construction projects to refresh downtown streetscapes and civic facilities in the late 1990s. This corresponded with the start of the urban upswing that persisted through the early 2000s and might be now showing cracks due to covid and the homeless and affordability crises in some metros.

I've noticed now that it's been about 25 years a lot of these improvements look beat and need a good powerwashing at a minimum. As a 90s kid now in my 30s I remember my parents taking me and my sister on a train ride on DART the year it opened, walking around the West End, etc. Back when it was sort of nice. It was enough of a landmark that around the same time there was an extraordinarily stupid made for TV movie about Dallas being hit by asteroids and they filmed it all around there. Now however when you go to downtown Dallas, a lot of the streetscape is looking bad in that area. The decorative paving is busted up, the lampposts and street furniture and light rail station fixtures are all rusting and dented from a quarter century of being sideswiped by cars, etc. I may be misremembering but I swear there used to be trees and now there aren't. It's very sad and the huge gatherings of vagrants makes it somewhere you want to actively avoid.

This isn't meant to be a thread about issues like homelessness and crime or vacant buildings per se, though those things need to be addressed. Alongside fixing those issues so people feel safe again, I wonder if it's time to go in and refresh streetscapes to advertise that things are different now, under new management. Also this allows for an adjustment of what the designs are supposed to accomplish. In the 90s the idea was to mall-ify downtown, but today malls are struggling so a different design objective might be better.

I noticed a similar thing in Seattle. Areas that were obviously fluffed up around the time Westlake Center was modernized around the turn of the millenium are kind of crumbling and need a good hose down and new pavement. Chasing away the homeless camps is step 1, but step 2 is to crack down on boarded up storefronts from 2020 and whoever owns the property on 3rd where the scary McDonald's is needs to be put in the stocks so locals can throw rotten tomatoes at them.

Denver is the same deal. 16th street mall is very nice but as time has passed it's physically reaching end of life on street furniture and paving. The granite slabs they made the sidewalks from uneven and slippery now. They could totally renovate places like Tabor center and the Pavilions. Good tree coverage though.

Minneapolis renovated it's Nicollet Mall already. It's allowed the ship to sail on downtown retail and is reorienting around being a neighborhood. Good for them. I thought Minneapolis was very very clean if a little austere when I was there in 2017, which was already 5 years ago so maybe it's changed.

Houston is a mixed bag as a lot of it was redone later or recently, but the main street corridor does need an update since 2004. I think more of it could be a transit and pedestrian mall because the road is already blocked in some places (the fountain, etc). I do think the dark red brick needs a spray down or should go and I think there needs to be more trees.

Anyone else of a similar mind on this topic?

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

For a lot of cities like Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, etc, there were construction projects to refresh downtown streetscapes and civic facilities in the late 1990s. This corresponded with the start of the urban upswing that persisted through the early 2000s and might be now showing cracks due to covid and the homeless and affordability crises in some metros.

I've noticed now that it's been about 25 years a lot of these improvements look beat and need a good powerwashing at a minimum. As a 90s kid now in my 30s I remember my parents taking me and my sister on a train ride on DART the year it opened, walking around the West End, etc. Back when it was sort of nice. It was enough of a landmark that around the same time there was an extraordinarily stupid made for TV movie about Dallas being hit by asteroids and they filmed it all around there. Now however when you go to downtown Dallas, a lot of the streetscape is looking bad in that area. The decorative paving is busted up, the lampposts and street furniture and light rail station fixtures are all rusting and dented from a quarter century of being sideswiped by cars, etc. I may be misremembering but I swear there used to be trees and now there aren't. It's very sad and the huge gatherings of vagrants makes it somewhere you want to actively avoid.

This isn't meant to be a thread about issues like homelessness and crime or vacant buildings per se, though those things need to be addressed. Alongside fixing those issues so people feel safe again, I wonder if it's time to go in and refresh streetscapes to advertise that things are different now, under new management. Also this allows for an adjustment of what the designs are supposed to accomplish. In the 90s the idea was to mall-ify downtown, but today malls are struggling so a different design objective might be better.

I noticed a similar thing in Seattle. Areas that were obviously fluffed up around the time Westlake Center was modernized around the turn of the millenium are kind of crumbling and need a good hose down and new pavement. Chasing away the homeless camps is step 1, but step 2 is to crack down on boarded up storefronts from 2020 and whoever owns the property on 3rd where the scary McDonald's is needs to be put in the stocks so locals can throw rotten tomatoes at them.

Denver is the same deal. 16th street mall is very nice but as time has passed it's physically reaching end of life on street furniture and paving. The granite slabs they made the sidewalks from uneven and slippery now. They could totally renovate places like Tabor center and the Pavilions. Good tree coverage though.

Minneapolis renovated it's Nicollet Mall already. It's allowed the ship to sail on downtown retail and is reorienting around being a neighborhood. Good for them. I thought Minneapolis was very very clean if a little austere when I was there in 2017, which was already 5 years ago so maybe it's changed.

Houston is a mixed bag as a lot of it was redone later or recently, but the main street corridor does need an update since 2004. I think more of it could be a transit and pedestrian mall because the road is already blocked in some places (the fountain, etc). I do think the dark red brick needs a spray down or should go and I think there needs to be more trees.

Anyone else of a similar mind on this topic?

I certainly am and that's the most infuriating part of living in Los Angeles is that our city government is completely inept when it comes to the small things / quality of life issues so that 1990s refresh you mentioned is probably 1960s here. This would be for city of LA only as the other cities do a great job such as Pasadena, Glendale, Culver City, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach, etc

[pdxtex]

Portland still likes to use those flags to celebrate events. Like those old timey banners on the side of light poles. Im cheesey. I kind of like that stuff. Most of our mini improvements tend to be transit related. Temporary bike facilities that are now permanent. Its funny were talking about the 90s tho. There is already talk of replacing the moda center, it was built in the mid 90s.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Arizona Center (outdoor mall in Downtown Phoenix that opened in 1990) just completed a huge renovation but I'm not sure how much more welcoming its become?

[mhays]

I believe Denver's starting a big revamp of the 16th Street Mall.

Seattle's Westlake Center and adjacent square (triangle) were built around 1990, so yes they're showing wear (they were a huge pit in the late 80s as Westlake Station was built underneath). A major redo of the entire Pike and Pine corridor is gearing up, though they'll keep elements of the existing design around Westlake apparently. https://www.seattle.gov/designcommis...ojectdocuments

[Double L]

Houston has in my opinion done a great job of continuing its downtown renaissance into today. We built stadiums, light rail, new theaters in the theater district, and used tax incentives to bring development downtown in the 1990s-early 2000s. But since then, we have built Discovery Green, a well planned and located park that has sprung up an entire new neighborhood of skyscrapers downtown, a downtown grocery store and new food halls, improved the nearby East End and Midtown neighborhoods, Improved the Market Square area, renovated our Houston Center mall built in the 1980s, built POST Houston in an attempt to bring retail downtown along with another failed attempt to bring retail downtown called green street which was a failed downtown urban mall, and most importantly, greatly expanded downtown housing with new residential high rises.

We have the downtown improvement district in Houston that continually works to improve downtown Houston. It was established by the Texas Legislature in 1996. Their job is to continually invest in improving Downtown Houston and continue its renaissance.

Houston never really stopped doing our 90s downtown renaissance, we are continuing the downtown investment today.

[ardecila]

Yeah I've noticed this. Saw a lot of it while walking around downtown Dallas, or Cityplace etc. Unfortunately US cities are uniformly terrible at maintenance, largely because labor costs are high and politics forces cities to keep taxes low. So rather than maintain streetscapes, civic improvements, etc we just let them deteriorate until everyone is sick of them, then get a big one-time capital investment to replace it all with the next flashy thing.

There are a few options to deal with this issue - since the public sector can't do it, there are various ways to privatize. One option is to create a Business Improvement District where commercial property owners voluntarily tax themselves to fund regular cleaning/trash pickup/maintenance, sometimes private security if the city will allow it.

For important parks/plazas, you can also create a conservancy which basically takes one-time charitable contributions and puts them into an endowment, then funds cleaning/trash pickup/maintenance off the interest on the endowment. I think several public spaces in Dallas were done this way, Klyde Warren Park, Thanksgiving Square, etc by various semi-private (or religious) groups.

Or you can use a private development model like Domain in Austin or Legacy in Dallas, basically giving full control of the streets and public spaces to one large property owner or HOA who is responsible for maintenance. This can be a shopping/entertainment destination like Domain or just a mixed-use neighborhood. It's harder to do in an existing street grid area, but sometimes you do get large parcels with a master development in/near the inner city.

Nowadays I think there is an increased recognition when building a new park, plaza or streetscape that the long-term needs need to be considered and addressed at the beginning; the 90s were really the tail end of that reckless "free money from the Feds, spend it as fast as we get it" strategy. Now we are firmly in the neoliberal era of corporate involvement, sponsorships and privatization.

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by mhays

I believe Denver's starting a big revamp of the 16th Street Mall.

Yes, it has started. I just got back and it was all torn up down by Market Street.

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by Double L

Houston has in my opinion done a great job of continuing its downtown renaissance into today. We built stadiums, light rail, new theaters in the theater district, and used tax incentives to bring development downtown in the 1990s-early 2000s. But since then, we have built Discovery Green, a well planned and located park that has sprung up an entire new neighborhood of skyscrapers downtown, a downtown grocery store and new food halls, improved the nearby East End and Midtown neighborhoods, Improved the Market Square area, renovated our Houston Center mall built in the 1980s, built POST Houston in an attempt to bring retail downtown along with another failed attempt to bring retail downtown called green street which was a failed downtown urban mall, and most importantly, greatly expanded downtown housing with new residential high rises.

We have the downtown improvement district in Houston that continually works to improve downtown Houston. It was established by the Texas Legislature in 1996. Their job is to continually invest in improving Downtown Houston and continue its renaissance.

Houston never really stopped doing our 90s downtown renaissance, we are continuing the downtown investment today.

I may have mentioned this here before, but the corporate involvement in Houston's streetscapes and other infrastructure is a great model for other cities. Corporations participate in "zones" that are typically kept landscaped and clean of litter and graffiti, and improvements are made to infrastructure (e.g., streets, sidewalks, parks, etc) in relation to new corporate developments. I'm not sure how the financial part of it works, but my understanding is that there are big incentives for businesses to do this. I've seen lots of such areas within the city proper. It's easy to see when you leave one of the zones and go into an area that doesn't have such improvements and maintenance. My understanding is that this concept is why areas like Uptown and Greenway look so sharp. I'm wondering if it's being used in the Energy Corridor, parts of which also look pretty snazzy. Houston has 27 such zones (TIRZ zones). I've tried to get city leaders in Austin interested in this concept, with little response so far. Austin has in incredible skyline, but general city cleanliness and maintenance is poor relative to other cities in the country.

Edit: I found some information indicating that the TIRZ zone concept was establish by state law, and that there are many in the state (just not much of this in Austin).

[Comrade]

Salt Lake built a massive outdoor mall on the western edge of downtown (over an abandoned railyard) in the late 90s, early 2000s. There has been a tug of war of sorts between Main Street and Gateway. Main Street was in bad shape throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, despite the city investing a lot of money in two downtown malls. Gateway was very controversial for this reason, as it was expected to syphon off what little retail and foot traffic Main Street had - and it kinda did. Main Street continued its death spiral into the 2000s as the Gateway flourished.

But then the site of the two malls were demolished for an open-air center that mixed retail with commercial and residential. This forced Gateway to now adapt, as it started losing a significant amount of its foot traffic.

Even today, Gateway hasn't fully recovered and still hasn't really decided what kind of development it wants to be. Frankly, I think it needs to focus more on being a nightlife area, since it's close to a few clubs and, most importantly, right across the street from the Utah Jazz' NBA arena.

But Utah has quirky laws, especially liquor laws, that make it difficult to zone for that.

Because of it, and the fact that area is still heavily influenced by the homeless, the Gateway just seems to be in limbo. So many vacant storefronts.

They just don't seem to know what to do with it.

[Atlas]

Gateway is way better than it was 5 years ago. It has a really big corporate tenant (Recursion), a hip food hall, small grocery store, some decent restaurants, a remodeled Megaplex, and even a unique little bar with a view (Seabird). If you haven't been there recently, you'll be surprised. Still some empty storefronts but it seems to actually be recovering.

[pdxtex]

Urban open space and plazas are a tough amenity to get right out west. Make them too inviting and hobos take over, make them too austere and, hobos take over. Portlands Pioneer Sq. is mid 80s but its been a constant challenge to make it inviting and safe over the years. The city is pretty good with booking free civic events tho so its pretty lively even tho it looks a little dated. In the end its not so much what the place looks like but how it interacts with the surrounding environment.

[Comrade]

Originally Posted by Atlas

Gateway is way better than it was 5 years ago. It has a really big corporate tenant (Recursion), a hip food hall, small grocery store, some decent restaurants, a remodeled Megaplex, and even a unique little bar with a view (Seabird). If you haven't been there recently, you'll be surprised. Still some empty storefronts but it seems to actually be recovering.

I was there last month and it was dead. I can't say how it was five years ago, though, because this was my first trip there in a while (well I did go to Dave and Busters last year).

[mhays]

I bet a lot of downtowns have business-funded housekeeping districts. Seattle does, through a MID related to the Downtown Seattle Association. They're good (cleaning, walking ambassadors, security augmentation), but not enough.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by mhays

I bet a lot of downtowns have business-funded housekeeping districts. Seattle does, through a MID related to the Downtown Seattle Association. They're good (cleaning, walking ambassadors, security augmentation), but not enough.

I was pretty shocked with downtown actually. Between 6th and 1st Ave, it looked post apocalyptic with the filth, boarded up windows and meth heads shuffling around.

Last weekend was a odd mix of Pokémon Go people and crazy homeless wandering around aimlessly.

Still an awesome city even if I did get Covid there..

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by Double L

Houston has in my opinion done a great job of continuing its downtown renaissance into today. We built stadiums, light rail, new theaters in the theater district, and used tax incentives to bring development downtown in the 1990s-early 2000s. But since then, we have built Discovery Green, a well planned and located park that has sprung up an entire new neighborhood of skyscrapers downtown, a downtown grocery store and new food halls, improved the nearby East End and Midtown neighborhoods, Improved the Market Square area, renovated our Houston Center mall built in the 1980s, built POST Houston in an attempt to bring retail downtown along with another failed attempt to bring retail downtown called green street which was a failed downtown urban mall, and most importantly, greatly expanded downtown housing with new residential high rises.

We have the downtown improvement district in Houston that continually works to improve downtown Houston. It was established by the Texas Legislature in 1996. Their job is to continually invest in improving Downtown Houston and continue its renaissance.

Houston never really stopped doing our 90s downtown renaissance, we are continuing the downtown investment today.

Regarding the downtown improvement district you mentioned, is that one of the TIRZ zones that I was talking about, or something separate?

[Double L]

Regarding the downtown improvement district you mentioned, is that one of the TIRZ zones that I was talking about, or something separate?

From the Downtown Houston management districts website.

The Houston Downtown Management District (Downtown District) was formed by an act of the Texas Legislature in 1995 and has been in operation since 1996. Since its inception, Downtown has experienced an exciting renaissance and made a remarkable economic rebound. Today, more Houston residents as well as visitors see Downtown as a place to do far more than work — Downtown is now a place to live, dine, visit, play, enjoy the arts, worship and learn!

The Downtown District is bounded largely by the freeway ring around Houston’s central business core, including Interstate 10, Highway 59 and Interstate 45. The District operates under the direction of a 30-member board of directors whose primary focus is to leverage public funds with assessments to improve facilities and services, as well as accelerate area improvements that benefit the area above and beyond the level presently provided by local government or voluntary effort.

http://www.downtowndistrict.org/

[bobdreamz]

Downtown Miami's Flagler Street under renovation:

• Video Link

The last time Flagler Street was renovated was back in the 1980's.
Although I do applaud the effort I'm not sure if this project will help much to attract people back to the heart of downtown considering how Brickell has exploded in the last few years. It is a destination point especially at night for shopping & dining.

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by Double L

From the Downtown Houston management districts website.



http://www.downtowndistrict.org/

Impressive program.

[Rizzo]

My parents live in a small town that underwent a huge downtown streetscape and sidewalk improvement project in the late 90's. It was tens of millions of dollars which is a big budget for a small town. But 25 years later, it looks perfectly new. It is well maintained, landscape tended to and brick pavers and concrete power-washed at least once every couple of years. That's all it takes and a well managed downtown development authority that's held accountable for conditions.