General Development News
Bexley Concerned About Reutilizing Commercial Areas
UA is not the only community concerned about its low proportion of commercial area.
Local Developer Sets the Stage for Communities that Want a Funding Partner in Redevelopment Projects
In a recent Columbus Dispatch article, developer Mo Dioun talks about his ability to work successfully with central Ohio suburbs on public/private redevelopment efforts. Dioun has just completed the renowned Creekside project in Gahanna and is working with the cities of Dublin and Grove City on other similar community-oriented centers.
According To The EPA's Smart Growth Initiatives:
"The Uptown District in San Diego, California, demonstrates how redeveloping abandoned retail centers, or 'greyfields,' can help revive and reconnect communities. The project, a successful 14-acre
mixed-use, high-density development in the city's Hillcrest neighborhood, was built on the site of an abandoned department store and its surrounding parking lot. The city of San Diego purchased the
site in 1986 with the intent of building a new library but subsequently decided to keep the library downtown. The city conducted an intensive community planning process, including an early visual
preference survey, to help formulate the design of the mixed-use development."
Read More...
According To The Smart Growth Network:
"Smart growth supports the integration of mixed land uses into communities as a critical component of achieving better places to live. By putting uses in close proximity to one another, alternatives to driving, such as walking or biking, once again become viable. Mixed land uses also provide a more diverse and sizable population and commercial base for supporting viable public transit. It can enhance the vitality and perceived security of an area by increasing the number and attitude of people on the street. It helps streets, public spaces, and pedestrian-oriented retail again become places where people meet, attracting pedestrians back onto the street and helping to revitalize community life. In today's service economy, communities find that by mixing land uses, they make their neighborhoods attractive to workers who increasingly balance quality of life criteria with salary to determine where they will settle."
According to a Website Dedicated to the Worldwide Trend Called New Urbanism:
"The principles of New Urbanism can be applied increasingly to projects at the full range of scales from a single building to an entire community: walkability; connectivity; mixed-use & diversity; mixed housing; quality architecture & urban design; traditional neighborhood structure; increased density; smart transportation; sustainability; and quality of life. Taken together these add up to a high quality of life well worth living, and create places that enrich, uplift, and inspire the human spirit."
Accoding to Emerging Trends in Real Estate:
"For the real opportunities today, look at obsolescent properties in excellent locations as land plays. You knock what’s there down and start over. Successful metropolitan areas will be those that redevelop and strengthen existing neighborhoods and districts, integrating residential with commercial and recreational uses, rather than expanding and diffusing resources outward."
Accordong to Urban Planning Expert Victor Dover:
"Rather than struggling to find a way to keep the sites going as retail developments, he recommends that town leaders look for better opportunities. “ Sometimes a mall goes out of business because it has lost its economic reason for being. But almost every community needs something. Stop thinking about these as failed shopping center properties and start thinking about them as potential mixed-use properties."
Excepts from the book Greyfields Into Goldfields, by Lee Sobel
An essential element of mall revitalization is local government participation. Local governments have invested financially in almost every success story in this book. In some, the government has ongoing involvement in management and development.
In the 12 case studies in the book, almost every project received public funding or fiscal incentives. Two of the centers are publicly owned and two more are on public ground leases. On average, those not owned outright by a public agency received approximately 25 percent of their total development costs in subsidy, typically through infrastructure construction and land assembly assistance. On average the new developments have 37 percent less retail than the previous mall.
There are places where the private sector lacks the training and talent for new urbanist redevelopment projects. This means that the City or some entity with financial capacity must be willing and able to take on the risks of acting as a master developer.
Trend lines are clear. Better suburbs will increasingly take on the positive aspects of larger 24-hour cities – multifaceted environments with a critical density of prime residential neighborhoods, a thriving business environment, and service retail integrated together.
To stop the cycle of obsolescence and start building durable neighborhoods, real estate professionals must break out of the single-use development model.
Click Here For A Summary Of The Study (PDF)