Quote:
Originally Posted by JACKinBeantown
EVERY foot of every ground floor in any urban residential neighborhood is a prime candidate for retail. Walk just about anywhere in New York City and you'll see every retail space filled with a store, a diner, a restaurant, a doctor's office... you name it. Not including ground level retail is a wasted opportunity. If I lived in that building I'd love to have a diner I could visit for breakfast or a midnight dinner. Retail makes the neighborhood. When will they learn?
|
I know I'm a bit late to the conversation, but that's not really true, even in New York. My wife lived in a ground floor Astoria apartment a block from the subway and there was no retail in her building or the adjacent buildings. Most of Manhattan other than midtown and downtown follows the traditional big city residential street/high street pattern. My brother in law lives on the Upper West Side 2 blocks west of the Natural History Museum on a street that's almost entirely residential all the way to the river, with no retail other than on the corners. My wife's best friend lives in a big residential apartment building in Clinton Hill that is also in a retail-free zone and only a few blocks from the Barclay's Center. It doesn't mean those neighborhoods aren't vibrant walkable urban areas.
This urban residential renaissance is great for SA as it's creating incentives for retail development down there, and there's no shortage of places for it to be when it ultimately comes. But right now these little steps are fine.