malls to mainstreets

Bus Transit at Belmar

Submitted by Filmanowicz on Tue, 08/07/2007 - 2:38am. Tags for this image:
When it was built in the 1960s, Villa Italia was the largest mall west of the Mississippi. In decline years later, Villa Italiana was scraped and replaced with Belmar, an award-winning mixed-use neighborhood development. Now buses serve the development's tight-knit network of streets and blocks. On the right are eclectic local shops in tiny retail space lining a Belmar parking structure.
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Western Approach to Bayshore Town Center

Submitted by Filmanowicz on Mon, 05/07/2007 - 2:43am. Tags for this image:
The internal streets at Bayshore Town Center frame a town square and are lined with shops and restaurants, but the project presents a gaping parking decks, several surface lots, and only a few leftover storefronts to the major streets lining its perimeter. The project illustrates a point that urban designer Seth Harry often makes: that typical town center retailers like the Gap or Williams-Sonoma have business models that depend on drawing customers from throughout the region. As a result, in most cases the parking and infrastructure needs of these regional retailers begin to dominate the urban environment that's created, costing the development a fully satisfying sense of place.
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Parking-Count Sign at Bayshore Town Center

Submitted by Filmanowicz on Sun, 05/06/2007 - 7:42pm. Tags for this image:
When the former Bayshore mall became the mixed-use Bayshore Town Center, this sign appeared at a busy corner of the property to reassure shoppers and office users that parking spaces were available for them inside. At all times but the busy weeks before Christmas, however, the sign and others like it reveal the prodigious amounts of surplus parking at the center. And that parking has costs, as well as benefits. Since the center's array of stores, restaurants, and offices (a small number of townhouses are coming) are wedged into a relatively small site along with enough parking to satisfy standard suburban parking ratios, large parking decks and unsightly surface lots greet visitors from many of the major entrances, creating a dubious welcome to an urban project. See related images.
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