Quote:
Originally Posted by audiomuse
We really need more shopping in downtown Austin. Affordable but trendy clothing stores like H&M and Forever 21 are great destination retailers and would bring a lot more people downtown. A City Target store would be great as well. These types of stores would draw large amounts of people walking around downtown on the weekend and strolling around for some shopping. It really promotes street-life and the "window-shopping" atmosphere. It would give suburbanites/people who don't live downtown a reason to go there during the daytime hours.
San Antonio... a city that has much less people living in its downtown has the Rivercenter Mall with all the typical suburban shopping mall type stores. People go downtown to shop there.
Instead of an enclosed mall though I'd like to see retailers locate at street-level. That or some open air shopping arcades/pedestrian streets. Downtown still really feels like a restaurant/bar dominated place. The shopping that is available is mostly specialty stores and boutiques that the majority of the population don't do the bulk of their shopping at. Whole Foods is great but I'm really looking forward to the more affordable Trader Joe's coming to the Seaholm. I'm a big supporter of all of the local shopping options available downtown right now but I personally think that the introduction of national retailers would only be a boon for everyone. It would draw more a more diverse group of people downtown.
It would be amazing to see the pedestrian traffic SOCO gets on the weekends in the downtown area
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I'm on the fence with that one. I would never in a million years want Austin to strive to be like downtown San Antonio and their semi-urban touristy giant corporation stores/restaurants. It is the 3rd ring of hell (I can say that as a native san antonian). At the same time I agree that we need more practical and well known retailers. A large well known anchor tenant somewhere would be great.
Honestly, I can't shop on 2nd street or congress for almost anything... and those are supposed to be the main retail destinations. They're not. Over the years we've seen shops come and go almost over night on 2nd because they are NOT realistic stores for people who live downtown. I think downtown ATX needs to take note from Portland, OR
http://downtownportland.org/