From Tim Anderson, President WDAC via JD Milburn at Wisconsin Main Street. You might find some good nuggets here. Got this from a think tank I participate in from time to time. The benchmarking sounds interesting.
Downtown Development
Downtown development is the promotion of development, redevelopment, and revitalization of the central business districts and adjacent areas in a city. Commercial and residential growth in the suburbs has contributed to the decline of downtown. Downtowns traditionally are the centers of both business and culture. Developing downtowns, therefore, involves a range of activities, including marketing for both business and tourist attraction, building or improving infrastructure, clean-up initiatives, property redevelopment and reuse, and retention programs. The purpose of these initiatives is to create an attractive environment to increase the number and variety of businesses downtown and bring in shoppers and tourists.
Since downtown development encompasses multiple activities designed to meet complimentary goals, it requires partnerships among local government, chambers of commerce, and public-private partnerships – such as business improvement districts and convention or tourist bureaus – in order to succeed.
Trends in Downtown Development
Safety and crime prevention encourage downtown visits. Strategies that are used include:
- Security surveillance equipment
- Public advice on using public transportation safely
- Environmental design that deters crime, such as improving street lighting
- Positioning of 911 boxes in the streets and other areas
- Security guards
- Ambassadors, which give people important information, such as directions
- Arts districts – with their galleries, cinemas, opera houses, artist housing, and theaters – are emerging as an important revitalization tool and are continuing to grow in popularity in downtowns of all sizes.
- Mixed-use downtown developments that include retail, residential, and entertainment, create downtowns that are busy around the clock all week long.
- Retailers are showing a renewed interest in central business districts (CBDs), due to the potential size of untapped markets.
- Large scale projects are developed to stimulate lagging areas. For example the new convention center in Washington , DC is expected to generate $14 million in economic stimulus each year.
- Waterfront development utilizes neglected or under-utilized downtown waterfronts to provide recreation, business, commercial, and residential areas. Baltimore ’s once desolate Inner Harbor has been developed into a thriving commercial and tourist area.
- The redevelopment and preservation of railroad stations to attract business near the stations and help to revive surrounding downtown areas.
- Some communities are moving away from developing large projects such as sports stadiums (attracting people only on game days) towards smaller-scale projects.
- Communities develop open space to create improve the quality of life in urban cores.
- Hotel construction in downtown areas meets the growing demand for accommodation from people on business, and also acts as a spur encouraging tourists.
- Integrating transportation and land use in downtown areas produces a more efficient transportation system whilst reducing congestion and pollution:
- Creating and extending cycle routes
- Developing more integrated mass transit systems
- Building pedestrian friendly streetscapes
Market research has become a key component of downtown developments. Understanding local markets helps to decide which potential projects will meet local demand and receive support.
Information technology businesses are moving into downtown offices with large open plans to nurture team work and collaboration.
Downtowns have also developed fiber optic infrastructures to support IT businesses. Maps of fiber optic cable help businesses locate near to fiber cable in downtown areas.
Funding for downtown projects has become more widely available and easier to obtain, due to public, media and government interest shown in CBDs.
Benchmarking and Evaluating Downtown Development Programs
Downtowns need to be diverse, dynamic, and livable spaces. To evaluate a downtown development initiative means taking all these components into consideration. Downtown redevelopment includes both physical and perceptual changes.
Since downtown development requires many partners and affects many people, neighborhoods, and businesses, evaluators need to look at who is involved and the nature of their relationships, as well as what gets done.
Many cities and towns have established downtown development strategic plans. Since each community has its distinct vision for its downtown, requiring different packages of programs and investments, it will be hard to make direct comparisons between community efforts. Evaluation of such a complex undertaking, therefore, should focus on the degree to which communities have achieved their goals.
Quantitative Measures
- Number of jobs created/retained
- Number of housing units developed
- Cost per job created/retained
- Vacancy rates for retail and office space
- Absorption rates for retail and office space
- Quality of available space (ratio of A, B and C office buildings)
- Crime rates
- Number of positive press hits on downtown activities, improvements
- Tourism rates (number of hotel nights, conference attendance)
- Culture (attendance at performances, museums, special events)
- Private-sector leverage
- Percent of jobs held by local residents/low income persons
- Average salary of jobs created
- Spinoff private investment
Qualitative Measures
- Number of actors involved in the downtown development strategy and the quality of their relationships
- Types and degrees of public-private interaction
- Stated project goals and the degree to which they have been achieved (e.g. crime reduction, increased retail sales or tourism development)
- Community engagement in the process
- Perceptions of downtown (cleanliness, accessibility, safety)
Playing on Jason’s and Gary’s themes.
How do we provide metrics?
Is Historic Preservation a qualitative metric or quantitative metric.
It might be both?
This provides WDAC with the opportunity to “Think Tank” Wisconsin!
If we come up with Metric’s then these form the good research to further justify WDAC and provide measuring sticks that others may use, buy, and the WDAC has found part business model?
People across the nation, the Federal Reserve, and others are grasping for these things to say that effective capital, and social deployment is happening.
WDAC may become somewhat of an expert, that many other groups use like UW-EX market analysis has become. Maybe WDAC will become the Downtown Brookings Institute?
Let’s keep working on this, lots of good mind power here! Now let’s channel that into funds, reputation, information to better the inner core, and last to provide good spinoff that brings members in. They can be research members, business members, municipality members, or whatever the board decides?
I may be wrong but the ultimate goal is a sustainable organization that benefits each members individual and corporate needs?
I also think of preservation and stewardship of our architectural history and the value this history and architectural richness brings the community. A great example recently mentioned by a local real estate professional in this area was his noticing how historic lofts are so much more marketable in La Crosse than a recently built large scale condominium development with 8 foot ceilings and white drywall construction. The market in the urban area seems to prefer the character of the older structures, tall windows, high ceilings and the small details that are often overlooked in modern architecture.
I agree with Gary’s comments on the hub and node system of land use planning. Instead of building new downtowns as housing expanded, we have spread out commercial growth into unrecognizable, diluted strips. ULI’s book ‘Revitalizing America’s Suburban Strips’ recommends ‘pulse node development’ which in my mind is creating new town centers divided by mixed use and housing. If our downtowns are one of a select group of commercial nodes, reinvestment and redevelopment are allowed to take place.
Gary,
excellent points all..another way to say it is..Why here in Wisconsin did we not learn from the mistakes of the suburbanization of American cities from the 60s till now? when others have? sure, the energy and growth will spread…but allowing the hole in the donut will only lead to major issues for metro areas down the line….and many missed opportunities for appropriate growth and change.
Best, Troy
p.s…somehow the word “Employment” needs to be added into that mix as a prioritization goal…housing trends follow that…et tous Verona?
Troy Thiel
Since Tim challenged us to engage debate on this, I will throw my perspective into the fray, which will probably trigger some reaction. I am throwing this out to contribute to possible refining of the piece that JD and his think tank started.
Point #1: “Commercial and residential growth in the suburbs has contributed to the decline of downtown.” This is a worn cliché that does not accurately reflect (in my humble opinion) the dynamics of growth. It is akin to saying that kids leaving home is the cause of the decline of the family. As our economy grows, it is a natural growth dynamic to spin off and grow new areas. The problem is that we have not done a very good job at understanding and managing that growth. As our understanding of these dynamics is growing, we are moving toward a better defined hub and node urban system where the goal is vital hubs and nodes of higher density throughout the region. The bottom line is that we can have commercial and residential growth in the suburbs and a healthy downtown if attention is paid to the entire urban system. An alternative phrasing could be “Our ineffectiveness at planning for commercial and residential growth in the suburbs and commensurate failure to develop a multi-modal regional transportation system has contributed to the decline of downtown.” This tone would probably want to be softened for any final document.
Point #2: “The purpose of these initiatives is to create an attractive environment to increase the number and variety of businesses downtown and bring in shoppers and tourists” I don’t mean any disrespect in saying this, but isn’t that the purpose of a mall? In my opinion this is just a small part of the purpose of a downtown. The purpose for carrying out downtown redevelopment is to create a vital dynamic environment that contributes to the quality of life within the region and efficient functioning of a regional system. The variety of business are a part of that vitality, having visitors come in from outside the area is also part of the vitality, but so are the institutions, the non-profits, the transportation systems, the public spaces, and even the rural parts of the region contribute to the vitality of downtown in a healthy regional system (and vice versa).
I don’t disagree with any of the rest of this, except that regional transportation linkages are missing and should be included, although mention is made of transportation and land use within the downtown, it is critical to mention regional transportation linking the regional nodes with the CBD.
JD – thanks again for getting the ball rolling on this. This is the kind of debate that will hopefully result in a refined message for WDAC that we can use in our membership recruitment and fundraising efforts.