Quote:
Originally Posted by Sight-Seer
I've always been bothered by the concept of "street-level engagement". Would that be street-level retail on a small scale? It makes city planners feel good. It might look good as you drive by. But what good is it really? Street-level engagement doesn't work unless you have street-level parking to go with it. And you generally don't. "Street-level engagement" is finding somewhere to leave your car, probably illegally, dashing in, dashing out, finding a parking ticket. Or a dent. It isn't convenient or easy. So why do it? It especially doesn't make sense in a situation like the proposed hospital on Eighth South. Who is going to be "engaged" by it anyway? How about street-level art that is interesting to look at? There's lots of art.
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I used to think the same way, and I'm still skeptical of requiring ground-floor retail in a lot of situations. Mandated ground-floor retail can be a financial albatross. It costs more per square foot to build, lenders often won't give you credit for space that isn't pre-leased, and the result is frequently a vacant bay the developer carries for years. That's survivable on a 300-unit tower. On the small corridor infill projects we actually need more of, it can be the thing that kills the project. But street engagement does not have to be retail.
I think the parking premise has it backwards. Street-level retail doesn't survive on drive-up customers; it survives on people who are already there. The customers are the residents upstairs, the workers in the building, the people walking over from a block away. A hospital on 800 South is actually a good example of that. I get the sense you're suggesting ground-floor retail wouldn't work there because nobody wants to walk around that area anyway. But I lived two blocks from there, and I can tell you the neighborhood is changing. People are out walking, even late at night. The two taco stands at 800 South and State draw a real crowd on their own, and that's before the hospital and all the workers, patients and visitors it will bring.
On art: I'm all for it, but art is static. It doesn't put anyone on the sidewalk, and it doesn't do the thing active ground floors do, which is give the street eyes and life at different hours. A mural on a blank wall is still a blank wall.
What makes a city enjoyable and worth living in is being able to meander, wander into a place you didn't plan on, and enjoy being there. You can't get that and prioritize car access at the same time.
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