THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 4, 1996 TAG: 9607040549
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 100 lines
A consultant hired by the Norfolk Historical Society has concluded that plans for the MacArthur Center mall fail to live up to the city's guidelines that the mall resemble a traditional downtown street more than the exterior of a suburban shopping complex.
In his 12-page report, Nore Winter, an urban design consultant, suggests the city put more storefronts and windows on the street, break the mall into smaller pieces and get rid of streets lined only with parking garages.
The mall ``can have an important economic benefit to downtown and to the city at large, but there are risks involved,'' wrote Winter, who leads the firm Winter & Company, based in Boulder, Colo. ``A concerted effort both programmatically and physically to integrate the project with surrounding uses will be essential for its success.''
City Planning Director John M. Dugan, although he had not yet seen the report, said Wednesday that he believed the city and developers were meeting the city guidelines that the mall's exterior be lively and encourage pedestrians.
``These are guidelines, not laws or regulations,'' Dugan said, ``but the intent is to make it as street-friendly as possible.''
He noted that the city had put extensive effort into designing the parking garages, which have street-level facades that may include display windows.
The mall will take up 22 acres on what was once eight city blocks. It is designed to have street entrances on all four sides now, but most of the walls of the two department store anchors are solid brick without windows. Parking garages face much of City Hall Avenue and Freemason Street.
Officials from the Taubman Co., which is investing $200 million to develop the MacArthur Center, have said it must first succeed as a mall. Their own attempts elsewhere to have some mall stores face a street have not succeeded commercially, they said. Maximizing business in the mall will increase its ability to contribute to the city coffers, they have argued.
The city and developers estimate that the mall will generate some $40 million in new tax revenue over the next decade.
But the historical society report's conclusions bolster those who have argued that the mall, being built with $100 million in city funds, will be isolated physically and will fail to enliven surrounding streets.
The critics fear that shoppers will arrive by car and not walk outside, while those already shopping downtown will be put off by the mall's exterior blank walls.
The Norfolk Historic Society has been a quiet but steady critic of aspects of the mall for several years. Until June, it had a semi-official role in helping to judge whether the mall meshed with the centuries-old streets and buildings that surround its site.
But when the city abandoned a package of federal loan guarantees for the mall's financing last month, it also freed the city from federal guidelines for judging its impact on historic areas.
Amy Yarsinske, president of the Norfolk Historical Society, said the report was intended as constructive criticism. The society's board voted Tuesday night, shortly after receiving the consultant's report, to send copies to the city manager and council, she said.
Yarsinske, trained as an urban planner, said she believed both the developers and city design officials were moving to address concerns Winter raised, and she complimented the ongoing design process as a cooperative one.
``It's going in the right direction,'' Yarsinske said.
Winter concluded that the mall's present design fails to live up to many of the city's guidelines for its development. Approved in July 1994, one of the guidelines states that ``the new development should not be designed like a suburban shopping center as an isolated, self-contained element, but as an integral part of the downtown urban fabric.''
Although specific in his criticisms, Winter was less pointed in suggested alternatives and apparently leaves specific design suggestions to the developer or the city.
Among the suggestions Winter offered are to:
Change the structure of the mall so it is more a collection of buildings similar in size to surrounding blocks.
Put things other than retail stores inside and outside the mall.
``Introducing service businesses, civic functions, dining and cultural venues, for example, would add to the diversity of the project and integrate it more genuinely into the neighborhood.''
Make the mall more attractive to enter from the street. Winter notes that several entrances into the mall from the streets funnel through long, narrow passageways inside parking garages, which ``will not be inviting.''
Put more storefronts and windows on the street. Winter quoted city guidelines that say `` `all the street facades should be treated as the street facades of urban buildings.' ''
Winter hinted that he would prefer a project that relied less on the automobile and abandoned the concept of a mall entirely.
``More innovative approaches to downtown retail development than the one proposed can certainly be cited across the country,'' Winter wrote. ``Noteworthy projects'' are those that in scale relate better to surrounding buildings and whose front doors face the street, he wrote.
``While discussions continue for light rail and other alternative modes of transportation in the city, none of these forward-looking tools appear to be shaping the development plans for MacArthur Center. Norfolk may not yet have reached the point in community awareness in which alternative modes of transportation strongly influence development review.''
The Planning Commission and the Design Review Board are expected to vote on the mall's overall site plan next week. ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing
An artist's rendering of the mall, as seen from City Hall Avenue,
shows one of its four-story parking garages in the foreground.
KEYWORDS: MACARTHUR CENTER by CNB