Recovery Playbook: Back to Downtown & Main Street
This guide is part of the series Recovery Playbook, providing guidance on how communities can recover from the impacts of the pandemic.
This guide is part of the series Recovery Playbook, providing guidance on how communities can recover from the impacts of the pandemic by prioritizing community engagement and quality of place.
From big cities to small towns, the upending of our daily routines around work, school, travel, and much more has had a profound impact on how we use our downtowns, Main Streets, and commercial districts. While most of these changes have been difficult, some have brought with them unique opportunities. If cities and towns are willing to embrace creativity and experimentation, they can use the lessons of the past two years as an opportunity to set themselves on a path for long-term success and sustainability.
Many big cities are heading into their third year with depleted in-office workforces, decreased downtown foot traffic, and continued damage to the social fabric of their downtowns. In cities like Boston, where office occupancy rates approach barely 20% of pre-pandemic levels, it’s taking its toll on the numerous downtown businesses and institutions that depend on this footfall to support their operations. From locally-owned restaurants and cafés to places like Boston Public Market and area cultural institutions, the limited foot traffic takes its toll on everyone.
While the future of Main Street and downtown remains highly uncertain, there are many things leaders can do now to position these districts for both short-term success and long-term resiliency.
The following guide will take you through short-term and long-term strategies for downtown and Main Street recovery. We’ll look at both the public and private realm to provide a holistic approach for your community.
Short-Term Strategies
Public Realm: Streets as Places
Since the earliest days of cities and towns, they have served the role of aggregator, bringing together diverse viewpoints and ideas to build, create, and constantly innovate. Town squares, plazas, and public spaces have always served as meeting points, spaces where workers in their homes and offices can gather to meet, conduct trade and commerce, and share ideas with those they may never cross paths with in their day-to-day life if it wasn’t for a happenstance meeting. The ability to break down both actual and perceived barriers in our cities and towns through creative placemaking can be a powerful one.
In New York City, for many years, thanks to the Plaza Program initiated by Janette Sadik-Khan, workers in office buildings have been able to utilize excess street spaces that have been converted into public plazas, workspaces, and vibrant, accessible spaces to gather. These public plazas allow anyone and everyone to mingle in the same space, regardless of industry, job, status, or financials. This ability to mingle and interact is much of the reason why we have cities; the ability to share ideas and lived experiences, collaborate, and learn from those with different opinions, backgrounds, and perspectives. Something that can, in large part, only happen in the public realm, a public realm that, for many cities, is dominated by cars and traffic.
In Montreal, in response to the pandemic and in a concerted push to increase business and social activity on commercial corridors, an investment was made in a city-wide open streets program. This program touched a number of downtown and neighborhood streets and included funding from the City to activate these spaces.
Some of these activations included outdoor dining parklets for restaurants, something more American cities and towns did to varying degrees. In Montreal, this went a step further. The City of Montreal funded the implementation of public workspaces in parklets across the city. Equipped with Wi-Fi, these spaces allowed people to take meetings outdoors, spend some time working within the public realm, and encourage more of the happenstance interactions that so many of us value and have missed recently.
On Main Streets around the country, an opportunity arose where less of their residential population, who typically commuted into big city office jobs were now spending more time within their communities. The opportunity to reconnect these folks with a Main Street economy in a new way emerged, with communities across the country finding new and creative ways to welcome people back downtown. In Norwood, Massachusetts, the town closed a small section of downtown streets to traffic and opened it to people, installing turf, tables, chairs, and lighting to create a welcoming, safe space for people to come grab a coffee, meet with friends, or just work for the day outdoors. The strategy was meant to help provide safe outdoor spaces for customers of area businesses. The plan went a step further, reconnecting an isolated town previously surrounded on all sides by traffic and helping people spend more time in town to rediscover both the commercial and also social benefits of spending time downtown.
Public Realm: Walkability & Parking
In many communities, there is often a perception that there “isn’t enough parking” close to Main Street or downtown. For some communities, that fact may be true based on population centers and how most people access the downtown core, but for many communities, there’s merely a parking perception problem that leaves communities hamstrung to actually focus on making improvements to the downtown. Take the shopping mall for example, many people who head to a sprawling suburban shopping mall will park relatively far away from the entrance to the mall and then walk thousands of feet to a store or restaurant that they’re trying to go to and think nothing of it. On a main street or in a downtown, complaints arise when there are not enough parking spaces right in front of where people want to go when there may be plenty just a short distance down the street, requiring a walk shorter than that at a shopping mall. It’s the perception, the mindset that individuals come to a main street with, some of which can be changed through proper messaging and improving the “walkability” of a district (check out our previous blog on conducting a walk audit to learn more).
Users walking will walk one distance from a car to a store in a mall without thinking twice, but that same experience isn’t readily replicated on Main Street. Focus on the place and create a better user experience.
“People don’t come to a place for the parking; they come for the experience.”
As we’ve seen during the pandemic, parklets, outdoor dining, and open streets have shown us the true value of our streets to create better places for our commercial centers and communities when our streets aren’t just focused on moving and storing vehicles but are used as places for people. What was once looked at as a crazy idea, eliminating parking spaces for other uses on Main Street is now being viewed as an opportunity to breathe new life into tired streetscapes and places to seed the public realm with life and energy.
Focusing on the user experience over the convenience of parking is a tried and true strategy that the shopping mall used to woo shoppers in the 60s and 70s, and a strategy that main streets and downtowns should be looking to today to woo shoppers, diners, and community members back into their districts.
Public Realm: Events
Events can be a heavy lift for many main streets and commercial districts but can pay dividends in many ways if done right and strategically to not be as heavy a lift and burden on short-staffed cities, towns, and organizations. We’ve seen successful placemaking interventions surrounding events in winter months drive foot traffic to districts that would otherwise be devoid of people during the colder months. Many of the most successful events were part of a series, a routine that encouraged people to come during weekends or set days to try and prolong a changed shopping habit for many. Purchase equipment once that can then be used across a wide array of annual events and make things easier and less expensive later on.
Your goals with any successful event program should be both short AND long-term. Short-term goals include bringing people back to the physical commercial district or main street, supporting businesses while providing a safe space for community gatherings. The long term goal is so change shopping and visitation habits. Encourage the thinking that this district is a destination, not just a place to pass through or a single errand but a space for gathering and for community. That second goal, the long-term shift, is integral to building success.
Private Realm
While cities and towns look to develop long-term strategies to deal with rapid turnover in the office and retail spaces, there are steps they can take to begin to support a sustainable and robust long-term commercial economy. As many commercial centers in big cities continue to struggle to bring people back to the office, and the long-term impacts of the change in work remain unknown, it’s important for cities and towns to get ahead and prepare for what our new “work/life balance” might look like for physical space.
Many companies may be left with excess office space on a long-term lease OR smaller companies may need to locate space as we begin to return to the office in some capacity. Commercial district activity is paramount to supporting the small businesses that thrive on an office based clientele.
Private Realm: Activating Excess Office Spaces
In big cities, getting footfall numbers up in downtowns is paramount to supporting the local economies. Encouraging larger companies that may be stuck with excess office space to list it on a city-hosted platform can support pairing those office opportunities with smaller companies looking for new, flexible space, willing to sublease, bringing new energy and foot traffic back to the downtown.
In small towns and on main streets, some companies may either not require workers to go back into the office at all OR provide an option for a flexible schedule, requiring a need for more flexible office space along Main Street. Similarly to big cities, providing a local clearing house that can serve as both an easy place to list excess office space while also pairing those individuals and small companies who are looking can be a major benefit to the local economy. It supports local workers and can help support a community’s small business economy by having more customers in the area at different hours of the day. It also supports the long-term stability of the region, potentially concentrating enough workers in one place that a small cluster of companies could be encouraged to open up shop there.
Private Realm: Activating Vacant Retail Spaces
Cities around the world have experimented with a number of different programs to fill vacant storefronts. A vacancy tax in cities like San Francisco is an attempt at the stick method of solving this problem, while cities like London have used more of a carrot model. Supporting property owners, small businesses, and creatives to fill vacant storefront spaces, supporting the local economy and creative community while seeding a neighborhood with new energy. The London program on “Meanwhile Uses” was a great example of an opportunity to take advantage of something many cities view as a blight on the neighborhood and turn it into an opportunity. Partnering with property owners to pair these small business entities with available space, breaking down the barriers to entry like lease negotiations, insurance, and startup costs to try and make the activation as simple as possible for all parties involved.
By activating commercial retail vacancies, even on a short-term basis, neighborhoods can provide an opportunity to a small-fledging business, seeding the success of a local small business community that can serve as the backbone of a strong, stable, and socially connected commercial district.
Long-Term Strategies
Past planning practices centering around Euclidian ideals of separating office, retail, and residential uses have created growing problems for our downtowns and left them vulnerable to large disruptions from the office sector. The current changes in work patterns also make many who were previously in the category of a “super commuter” think twice about going back to a life spent sitting in hours of traffic or long delays during peak times on mass transit. Incorporating more housing in our big city downtowns and more office AND residential along Main Street and small town downtowns will help strengthen our communities and guard them against future economic downturns and major shifts in the future, as well as just making them better places to live and work.
Long-Term Strategies: Diversity of Uses
To help gird traditional downtowns and commercial districts from future major economic or societal changes as we’ve gone through over the past two years, as well as in an effort to make our communities better places to live, we should look to reform many of these historically restrictive zoning policies aimed at separating uses. Encouraging more housing, cultural, and retail uses mixed into commercial neighborhoods through zoning and other incentive programs will eliminate some of the biggest issues around the lack of foot traffic that heavily surfaces during the pandemic. This lack of foot traffic provides a feeling of a lack of safety for a visitor (often a false sense), an air of “nothing happening” for passersby, and a lack of customers for retail businesses that rely entirely on office workers to support their businesses. Encouraging this diversity of uses into future zoning, planning work, and creative programs like short-term use and cultural facilities funding will provide long-term stability and sustainability to traditional downtowns and commercial districts.
Long-Term Strategies: 15-Minute Neighborhoods
One concept to look at as we begin to rethink how we plan our communities for the long-term is the “15-Minute Neighborhood.” The 15-Minute Neighborhood is a planning concept gaining notoriety recently, and one that, if implemented correctly, may help alleviate issues of congestion, housing costs, climate, local public health, social isolation, and equity while providing the opportunity to build stronger communities with a diversity of uses more insulated from future economic downturns. The 15-Minute Neighborhood concept aims to build vibrant, mixed-use neighborhoods where all residents can reach most of their daily needs within a 15-minute walk or bike of their home. The grocery store, a bar or restaurant, a neighborhood café, a library, parks, and open space are all within a short distance from your home. Commercial office space for folks working from home could also be included, nearly eliminating the need for vehicle ownership for many residents. This type of planning eliminates the need for certain vehicle trips, provides more of a reason for residents to utilize “active transport” methods like walking and biking, and encourages more random social interactions at neighborhood public spaces and sidewalks.
In Massachusetts, Patronicity Vice President Jonathan Berk advised on a report from Boston Indicators looking at how to build more equitable communities in the region utilizing the 15-Minute Neighborhood as an overarching planning concept. To view the complete report, please visit the Boston Indicators website.
A key aspect of many of the components and recommendations listed throughout this playbook has focused on the public realm and the crucial symbiotic relationships between the public and private realms within a community. It’s the space that is fully accessible to every member of your community, the space where your community gathers and where random social interactions are allowed to occur. These spaces, when factored in as part of a larger community planning process, can become the key that holds the fabric of your community together, supporting crucial social bonds and a strong, resilient local economy.
As a team, we at Patronicity are excited to help you plan, design, fund, and implement these public realm improvements to support short-term recovery and long-term sustainability in your community. If you are interested in learning more about how we can help your community develop a long-term recovery plan, email us at info@patronicity.com, and we can grab some time to chat!
