Quote:
Originally Posted by Kh9142
...I'm really not sure what is missing from Midtown...
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Midtown is missing that "there" feeling. When you go to AS, PCM, or Lenox/Phipps, it's for a purpose and the options are plenty, close together and diverse. Midtown has that for people going to work, but not as much for retail/entertainment etc. You're either going to eat at Taco Mac, going to see a show at Center Stage, going to a concert at Piedmont Park, or going to the museum for example. But because the big generators are scattered about with kind of dead zones in between, the mixed use benefit suffers (think of people going to buy a shirt in AS and then deciding to have dinner and a movie afterward). Midtown right now is like walking through a dying mall with only department stores and a few shops scattered in between. I'm not saying Midtown is dying, rather it's growing and just doesn't have critical mass of retail to create the "there" feeling yet. It's because the scale of development is so large and IMO has to go through growing pains before it's established enough to support the level and diversity of retail of that scale. Look at what happened to CB2. Retail on that large of a scale needs a wealth of smaller/similar shops to help support it. A bank, Panera, and sit-down restaurant is not gonna cut it. And every time I walked by and saw this dramatic showroom with nobody in there I knew it was only a matter of time before they left.
If developers coordinated and worked together like someone building a mall, retail would be more successful. Auto-centric suburban malls are terrible examples of city planning, but midtown could really benefit if they can achieve the same synergies among retailers within the interior of most malls. It will get there eventually, but someone has to paint the picture and then hold developers accountable at matching that vision with each new development.