Tag Archives: neighborhoods

UNCONVENTIONAL SUCCESS 1

American Urbanist: How William H. Whyte’s Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life, Richard K. Rein, Island Press, 2022.

Richard K. Rein has written a much needed, well researched, beautifully composed biography of William H. Whyte. That, I hope is a clear, declarative sentence of the sort which Rein tells us Whyte would have encouraged and approved. Rein not only skillfully relates the story of an important, if much neglected, thinker on a wide range of social phenomenon, but also puts in the hard journalistic work of drawing together the many seemingly disparate strands of his life’s varied work to highlight its significance. Of course, Whyte was the mastermind of the revitalization of Bryant Park and the careful observer of human behavior in public spaces. But he did so much else. He was the author of one of the most influential books of the 1950’s in the U.S., The Organizational Man, which described the social forces within the new, post-war, highly successful American corporations (and other large institutions) then dominating life in the West. Whyte, according to Rein, created the vehicle of the conservation easement, a key tool in preserving not just open space, but also structures of historic and architectural significance. He enlisted in the Marines, saw action at Guadalcanal and went on to do important strategic thinking for the military. He was influential in shaping the character of Fortune Magazine, an important cultural force in America in the 1940’s and fifties. And, perhaps, most unrecognized, Whyte encouraged and published the work of Jane Jacobs who, while acknowledging Whyte’s contribution to her work, thinking, writing and career, obscured recognition of Whyte’s major cultural, social and political impact.

Whyte worked quietly. He rejected being the leader of any kind of movement.  His work was based on careful observation of social phenomenon, notably using time-lapsed photography in his research in seeking out patterns of human behavior in public spaces. Also key to his technique was listening. He placed a high value on encouraging and heeding what citizens contribute to public decision-making processes about local issues.  He was, unusually, a highly disruptive thinker, without being a disruptive person. He was culturally part of New York’s establishment – a denizen of the prestigious and exclusive Century Association on West 43rd Street for fifty years.  He was supported by Rockefeller related organizations and Laurence Rockefeller personally for decades. Fortune Magazine was a bedrock institution of the mid-20th Century American corporate establishment. But in his good humored, wry way, he didn’t hold back. He shared with the world the conclusions he drew from the data he reviewed, even if they seemed incredible and at odds with the prevailing conventional wisdom. His work from the 40’s on was about making social institutions more effective by challenging their first principles, without threatening their powerful principals. His insights were usually spot on, and not just intelligent – but useful. His personal example, philosophy and modus operandi remain highly relevant and important, even more important, today. His self-abnegation, kindness, thoughtfulness and seriousness of purpose are exactly what our public realm needs more of. 

            Whyte came from the world of WASP privilege (St. Andrews School, Princeton University), enlisted to serve his country in combat and made major contributions to the American quality of life, particularly the return to the City of the 1990’s signified by the success of the reopening of Bryant Park. But, unfortunately, Whyte ended his life in semi-obscurity and not-so-genteel poverty. There seem to me to be two lessons from this arc. First, is the decline of WASP culture in America, and second the ascension of an American “meritocracy” that rewards aggression and attention seeking – qualities that WASP culture famously (and probably not actually entirely) rejected.[2] Rein, a Princetonian both by education and by current residence, gets this precisely right.

While a white, male Episcopalian, Whyte did not come from particularly great wealth. For years, according to Rein he was reliant on Rockefeller largess. He did not seem to desire fame or money – but did appear to enjoy operating at a high level – testifying before Congress, consulting with important government entities and writing in important publications. He, unlike Jane Jacobs, was not a rabble rouser. My sense is that Janites, who are particularly protective of the legacy of a woman whose professional accomplishments were remarkably ahead of her time, see recognition of Whyte as casting shade on Jacobs. It has also been in the particular professional interest of a number of strong-willed, skilled, self-promoting individuals who owed their success in large measure to Whyte’s ideas and support, to, while crediting Whyte for thought leadership, minimize his contributions to their own success. For example, Rein tells the story of how Whyte was excluded from the dais at the 1992 re-opening of Bryant Park, while Whyte’s work was absolutely the bedrock of that revitalized space’s extraordinary success. Rein sadly recounts how when Whyte’s health and finances were failing in the 90’s, unlike some others, he received little by way of financial benefit from that success. While the Rockefeller family provided him with philanthropic resources, given Rein’s recounting, it seems hard to describe that support as generous. 

In addition, the simplicity and counter-intuitiveness of many of Whyte’s ideas (like the deployment of movable chairs in public spaces, to which the poo-bahs of Princeton University, according to Rein, continue not to get) make the essence of his thinking a difficult sell, particularly to the politically attuned. Urban planners and policymakers still see the implementation of Whyte’s ideas as risky, requiring the surrender of control, and subject to derision upon failure. While every major city seems to want a Bryant Park, few are willing to give themselves up to Whyte’s wisdom – of which Pershing Square in Los Angeles is a prime example. 

Rein’s research is comprehensive and impressive. His journalism is impeccable. Whyte’s life history is recounted including many telling details. Rein, probably wisely, doesn’t attempt to sort out the current state of affairs among Whyte’s acolytes and evangelists. The complete history of the founding and recent changes at Project for Public Spaces remain to be fleshed out. Rein talks also about Whyte’s influence over the “New Urbanist” movement, which has, however, unfortunately focused for much of its history on greenfield development outside of major cities and has had little impact on improving historic downtowns. There is no getting around the fact that the public space improvements encouraged by Whyte’s ideas lead to what many now characterize negatively as gentrification, making people pointed to by Rein in the book as keepers of the Whyte flame, including at Project for Public Spaces, uncomfortable with Whyte’s legacy (and happier with citing Jacobs as an influence). The current situation of Whyte’s immediate legacy is unfortunately complicated by competing egos and personal agendas, which is ironic, but perhaps unsurprising, given Whyte’s personal modesty and soft-spoken manner. 

As Rein makes clear, the power of Whyte’s ideas may ultimately prevail. Richard Florida, perhaps the most influential urbanist of our time, has begun to say that he recognizes that no writer and thinker in urbanism has had more influence over his work than Whyte. Whyte’s message of the importance of maintaining an open mind, listening to community members and the value of disruptive thinking based on factual evidence presented with humility and a willingness to be found incorrect present a clear path forward to addressing the most important problems facing the U.S. and other Western democracies. The need for the toleration of risk taking, and even idiosyncrasy with organizations is, perhaps, Whyte’s most universal lesson[3]. Whyte’s was a quiet but imperative voice to which we would be well advised to listen, as Rein so persuasively makes clear. 


[1] With apologies and thanks for swiping his title, to the late, great David Swensen. 

[2] The novels of Centurion, Louis Auchincloss, describe this process in detail.

[3] Whyte, himself, was occasionally described as idiosyncratic – usually by establishment types. 

THE BEST OF TIMES

San Francisco/San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco is one of the most desirable places on the planet to live, both because of its climate and because of its amenities. As a result, many, many people want to live there. A good many of those people have substantial resources. A lot of those people are also highly skilled and/or unusually creative. That is why real estate in San Francisco is expensive. High demand. Step-function availability of supply. Basic economics: demand outstrips supply. Result: high prices. It is just not very complicated. And, more importantly it is a good, rather than a bad, thing.

            Admittedly, my recent visit was on spectacularly beautiful, cloudless days. The adjective “Mediterranean,” often used to describe the climate, could not have been more apt on this trip. We went to North Beach for a classic cioppino at Sotto Mare, we took the bus to the Pacific and sat on a park bench in the sun facing the ocean (with no sign of the generally ubiquitous “Carl the Fog”), reading the wonderful new, posthumous La Carré novel. We took in the Symphony and the Opera. We lingered at the new Salesforce Park. I was ready to start shopping for a new place to live. San Francisco, another city, like New York, is often described by the punditocracy as an astronomically priced hellscape; inhabited only by trustafarians, over-paid young techies and the wild-eyed, violent homeless. Sorry: not.

            We stayed at the wonderful Intercontinental in SOMA. The hotel has over thirty stores and floor to ceiling windows, with spectacular views of the City (many older San Francisco hotels are short and dark, with small rooms). However, the location, at Howard between Fourth and Fifth, exposes the walker to the epicenter of San Francisco’s un/under-housed population, which appears to be at 7th and Mission. The walk through the Civic Center on a Saturday night after a concert by the Symphony, while not dangerous, required passing through large groups of individuals sleeping on the sidewalks, selling things from blankets, with some acting out and appearing to be seriously mentally ill, surrounded by piles of stuff. Avoiding feces on the sidewalk was a non-trivial endeavor. There were pairs of men who appeared to be a private unarmed security force labeled “Urban Alchemy,” who appeared to be ineffectual. We also passed people sleeping in doorways in The Castro and other folks who pitched tents around highway ramps near the Embarcadero. My rough estimate is that the total number of individuals occupying public space we passed was more than 500 and less than 1500. Notably, in most other neighborhoods we visited, people visibly living in public spaces or behaving in obviously unpredictively ways were not present (Richmond, Sunset, North Beach, Glen Park).

            It’s worth observing that it is individuals visibly acting out who most contribute to a perception of physical danger. People yelling at passers-by or even to themselves, punching the air, kicking the sidewalk or zigzagging along the sidewalk appear unpredictable. They create for many pedestrians the possibility of unwanted physical contact. These, perhaps clinically psychotic folks, can also be the most difficult to engage and reach for professional outreach workers.

            While this sounds like a large population, it is by no means beyond addressing. Walking down Market Street, and particularly at 7th, it is apparent this is not a problem primarily about housing – there is social activity taking place among these San Franciscans that is part of what draws them to these locations, and their issues need to be addressed socially. At the same time, despite what I have been reading in the national media, there is new multiple dwelling unit residential construction happening all around the downtown, and lots of recently completed projects – even on Market Street itself. We spent an intrigued hour watching the process of the erection of an enormous construction crane across the street from our hotel.

We went for a walk in the expanding Mission Bay community, just south of the baseball stadium (the Giants lost the playoffs to the Dodgers our first night in town); a midrise, mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhood being built from the ground up. All the right moves seemed to have been made. While eating lunch in a parking space shed (kombucha soda, falafel sandwich — $45 dollars for two), I was reminded of our West End Avenue mid-rise neighborhood in New York, a highly desirable and successful product type. THIS is what Hudson Yards should have been. A vital, human scale place to live.

San Francisco needs to get past its politics and adopt a data driven, client centered approach to addressing the needs of its citizens living in public spaces. It should recognize that the issue ISN’T (just) housing and come to terms with that it’s never a rational life choice to sleep on the sidewalk. It needs Built for Zero and Community Solutions (https://community.solutions/built-for-zero/). It’s also important for the community to come to a consensus that people living in shared public space are monopolizing places that belong to everyone and should be available to be used in common. Someone playing loud music, engaging in commercial activity or even laying in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk, is EXCLUDING other folks from enjoying the experience of public space that, particularly post-COVID, we have learned is absolutely essential to urban living. No one should have the right to exclude others from quiet enjoyment of the limited resource of urban public space.

Creating a data base that includes a record for each client, working with them as individuals to get a medical and person history, building a trusting relationship with (potential) clients, and then linking them up with the benefits to which they are already entitled and the services they require. This is difficult, time-consuming work. But it can succeed, as Community Solutions is demonstrating across the country. In a city of 900,000, reaching a couple of thousand of people in distress, while important, is by no means a monumental task. It also doesn’t define the city.

Given the breadth of cultural offerings available in San Francisco, it is easy to forget that it a relatively small city. The depth of cultural and social resources is just remarkable. During our visit we took in an intellectually and visually overwhelming show of the paintings of Joan Mitchell at the SF Museum of Modern Art, a production of Fidelio at the Opera and a fascinating and engaging program at the Symphony. While I will leave to those more knowledgeable than myself to comment on the Mitchell show (Jed Perl has a long essay in the New York Review: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/11/04/joan-mitchell-painting-colors-conversation/) and to my spouse to review the Beethoven (staying in my conjugal lane), I would like to talk a bit about the Symphony concert. In fact, over the coming months, it is my plan to visit a different city every month, hear its orchestra and spend some time visiting and thinking about its downtown. Next month I’m planning to visit Cleveland. I’m particularly eager to go to Kansas City and Indianapolis – places to which I’ve not previously been.

The San Francisco Symphony has been widely admired in recent years both for its sound, as well as for its unique programming under its music director of two decades, Michael Tilson Thomas (now, unfortunately, recovering from surgery to remove a brain tumor). Most critical observers agree that the orchestra is the most interesting one, certainly west of Chicago, and perhaps in the country. With MTT’s retirement last year, he was succeeded by Essa Pekka Salonen, the former music director in Los Angeles – and long the object of desire of the New York Philharmonic, of which he has made clear he wants no part. The program that the SFO presented was a knock-out, including Debbusy, Messiaen and Saariaho, following an important stream of French composition from the late 19th through the early 20th Century – a current of compositional thought to which I am particularly drawn. Under Salonen’s baton the orchestra sounded, sharp, bright and tightly disciplined. While it didn’t particularly convey that characteristically mellow, French sound for which the Boston Symphony, for example, was once known, the performances did great justice to the music presented, and at the conclusion of the concert, I was delighted not to have to peel myself out of my chair as a result of the enthusiasm of the brass section as is so often the case at the end of Debussy’s La Mer. Debussy also kicked off the concert with Prelude à L’Après-midi d’un faune, showcasing the distinctly personal playing of the woodwind soloists.

But the concert’s featured events were (Oberlin alums) Jeremy Denk playing Oiseaux Exotique and Claire Chase playing Saariaho’s 2001 flute concerto Aile du Songe. Both were outstanding. Worth remaking on is that the Messiaen dispensed with the ensemble’s string sections and the Saariaho was played without winds other than the soloist, setting up an engaging contrast. Both performances made compelling arguments for each of the works. Denk, playing this rhythmically non-intuitive piece from memory, demanded attention – highlighting the contrasts with orchestral writing, and stressing the exotic nature of the bird calls that form the inspiration of the work. Chase’s performance was theatrical and intense. In both cases the orchestra was a committed and skilled partner, making the most of the coloristic writing of these composers, without blurring their impressionistic edges. The playing in La Mer sounded highly rehearsed and polished, reserving dramatic power for the appropriate places. One might argue, after hearing this concert, that the harmonically complex, French impressionist compositional style has ultimately proved a more productive path for composers than the spiky, audience alienating Second Viennese School – which seems to have proved to be something of a dead end.

This engaging program is one, unfortunately, we would be unlikely to ever hear in New York, and it must be said that about a quarter of the auditorium was unsold. This was the sixth concert in a big auditorium we had attended this fall (two at the Met in New York, one at Carnegie, one at Chicago Lyric and one at St. Ann’s warehouse), and while masking is certainly a suboptimal experience, all of those other shows played to full or nearly full houses and I have lived to tell the tale (so far). Fidelio at SFO also appeared to be fully sold.

We visited San Francisco’s newest public space, Salesforce Park, which is on the fourth-floor roof of the new downtown transit center. The transit center is actually a surprisingly appealing bus station – a more unlikely application of an adjective I can scarcely imagine. The loading platforms are airy and bright – as different from New York City’s Port Authority Bus terminal as one might possibly conjure! The park is six acres (the same size as Bryant Park), and most distinctively features a fabulously wide array of plant species from Mediterranean climates around the globe. The creation of roof soil and irrigation conditions to support this biosphere, particularly mature tree specimens of considerable height, is absolutely remarkable.

The operation of the park by BRV Redevelopment Ventures is nearly flawless. The “B” in BRV is Dan Biederman, my former Bryant Park boss, who has outdone himself, fixing a number of the problems we faced on Sixth Avenue, with the possibilities presented by ground-up new construction – particularly an attractively designed and appropriate performance area, something that Bryant Park lacked from day one. The park incorporates the successful Bryant Park tropes – movable chairs, well maintained restrooms, a complete slate of daily programs, a working water feature, meticulous trash removable and discreet security. The sinuous path around the space is often flanked by shaded benches facing the continuously varied gardens. The maintenance of those complex planting beds has to be a major undertaking. Bravo to Dan, his staff and to the design team for a massively, magisterially successful collaboration.

Certainly, the park can only be accessed by a one-way gondola from the Salesforce Plaza and a reasonably large number of elevator banks (and we thought Bryant Park was set off from the street!), making it somewhat inaccessible. I visited on a quiet Saturday – so I didn’t experience the park with a large crowd. But simply the idea of a quiet Saturday in the park is a luxury no longer afforded by Bryant Park, even on a rainy day. That inaccessibility presents the challenge for the park of becoming only an amenity for workers in the Salesforce Tower (now San Francisco’s tallest). But, unlike New York’s High Line, Salesforce Park is a real park (rather than a tourist attraction) which can be enjoyed in a multitude of ways (rather than being principally the experience of walking from one end to the other). It is a triumph for San Francisco and will likely increase in viability and strength as food and other concessions are developed over time.

San Francisco is a great, livable, vibrant city – and its real estate is expensive as a result. It has some serious problems, particularly its underperforming school system. Our reaction to San Francisco as urbanists shouldn’t be to denigrate or bemoan its success, but to work for the creation of more great places in order to enable more people to enjoy the benefits of living in a vital city.

ROCKIN’ THE CANADIAN ROCKIES

Olympic Plaza with no skaters

It is truly wonderful how many beautiful and great places there are in North America. Calgary, Alberta sits an hour from the Rockies and enjoys spectacular mountain views. Calgary is a little like Dallas, after having morphed into Houston. It started as a cow town (and I had a fantastic shell steak during my visit) and became an oil and gas city – the fourth largest city in Canada with a population of well over a million. It has eight buildings of over 40 stories in the downtown. The city was very much built around the car – with numerous parking structures in the center. You can drive downtown from the suburbs, park downtown and as a result of the extensive skyway system (called locally the “+15”), your feet never have to touch the ground in getting to and from your office.

My visit was sponsored by the downtown business improvement area (BIA), Calgary Downtown Association (CDA), as part of an exercise to revitalize Stephen Avenue, one of the city’s principal shopping streets. Several blocks of Stephen Avenue have been pedestrianized and are mostly made up of low-rise late 19th and early 20th century buildings. The street is shadowed by the surrounding office towers – which, at present, have in excess of a 30% office vacancy rate. The street abruptly “Ts” smack into the superblock containing City Hall.

Continue reading

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

02-crossing-brooklyn-ferry

This blog only represents the views of the author and does not reflect the policies of the City of New York or its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. 

Is urban “revitalization” a mere expression of cultural preference – reflecting white, upper-middle class predilections? Was the pre-revitalization 42nd Street somehow a more authentic expression of something before it, and Bryant Park, became “Disney-fied.” Essays in “Deconstructing the High Line: postindustrial urbanism and the rise of the elevated park,” edited by Christoph Linder and Brian Rosa (Rutgers, 2017), suggest that prior to its re-visioning as an urban public space, the High Line of gay cruising and wild, invasive plants was authentic, organic and more correct. In an essay in Deconstructing the High Line, Darren J. Patrick even argues that the pervasive and self-seeding, but non-native, Ailanthus altissima, had more of a right to live and thrive in the along the abandoned elevated rail line than the artificial more native, highly curated plant selection that distinguishes the High Line now.

When we were working at Grand Central Partnership and Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, we were occasionally surprised to learn that there were academics, like Sharon Zukin, who thought that we were engaged in a misguided attempt to destroy the complex, authentic social ecology of “The Deuce.” We couldn’t understand how someone might prefer the porn theaters, prostitution, unpicked up trash and three card monte of 42nd Street of the 70’s and early 80’s to what we were envisioning. Continue reading

Landing in Flyover Country

330px-CirrusSR20Landing

A Cirrus SR 20

Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America

By: James and Deborah Fallows

432 Pages

http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-8373827-11819508?sid=PRHEFFDF5A7F1&url=http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9781101871843

Owning and being able to fly your own plane creates a tremendous opportunity to learn about what is happening in communities across the country. There are thousands of landing strips outside cities large and small, and while a small plane is highly subject to the vagaries of the weather and only travels at a speed of about 200 mph, it sure seems to beat driving – and the views can be both amazing and illuminating.

James and Deborah Fallows have a Cirrus SR 20 (retail price $329,000, in case you’re asking), and Mr. Fallows knows how to fly it. The SR 20, a reader learns from the book, is the most popular single engine propeller plane on the market – and it comes with its own parachute – for the plane. They took advantage of this resource to travel around the United States, from northern Maine to southern California, to explore non-gateway cities and their progress towards revitalization. The largest of the places visited was Columbus, Ohio (now the largest city in the state). But most of the towns were much smaller: Duluth; Greenville, South Caroline; Bend, Oregon.

I’ve often heard speak of James Fallows as a fellow traveler of the placemaking movement, and his writing for the Atlantic and its City Lab reflect that. The book’s acknowledgements cite Fred Kent, Bruce Katz, Amy Liu and Richard Florida, names we know. But James and Deborah Fallows bring a particular perspective to their odyssey. First they are people who can afford to buy and keep that plane! Second, it’s clear from the text that they are members in good standing of the “inside-the-beltway” establishment. Not only does Mr. Fallows write for the Atlantic, but he was, early in his career, a White House speech writer (for President Jimmy Carter). While an SR 20 can’t fly much higher than 10,000 feet, and generally flies at lower altitudes, the D.C. native perspective tends to be from 30,000 feet. Indeed the Fallows’ attempt to take the same approach in gathering information about each of the two-dozen towns they visit (starting with visiting the editor of the local paper) and try to draw out patterns among what they find. Continue reading

Book Project: Learning from Bryant Park: Placemaking in Bryant Park. Revitalizing Cities, Towns and Public Space

BP After

I have just contracted with Rutgers University Press for the publication of Learning from Bryant Park: Placemaking in Bryant Park. Revitalizing Cities, Towns and Public Spaces in the Spring of 2019. I am so fortunate to be working with the experienced publishing professionals Peter Mikulas and Micah Kleit on this project.

The Success of “Broken Windows” Rightly Understood

Jamaica Alliance

Original Jamaica Alliance Team

Uneasy Peace

By: Patrick Sharkey

W.W. Norton & Company

It is hugely satisfying for me that Professor Patrick Sharkey’s important new book, “Uneasy Peace” concludes something that I have long suspected: in big cities across the country, violence has fallen as a result of the revitalization of public spaces by non-governmental organizations. Professor Sharkey, the Chair of the Sociology Department at NYU, argues that it has not been aggressive policing alone that produced the urban revolution of 1990’s, but rather the reestablishment of order in public spaces made a major contribution to the perception of public safety downtown.

My sense has long been that our work in the revitalization of Bryant Park (with its sister BIDs, Grand Central Partnership and 34th Street Partnership), along with that of the Central Park Conservancy in Central Park, was at the forefront of changing perceptions about urban public space. What the implementation of the “Broken Windows” philosophy as articulated by George Kelling and William Bratton is really about is high quality maintenance and programming in public space (fixing the broken windows) along with the presence of private, unarmed security personnel, rather than the kind of aggressive policing that produced the deeply intrusive and out of proportion “stop and frisk” policy that came to an end with the return of Bratton as police commissioner under Mayor Bill De Blasio. In my view, that kind of aggressive police engagement with the community is both dysfunctional and a distortion of what “broken windows” is really about. Continue reading

The Real Story of Sleepy Hollow

 

vintage-art-of-sleepy-hollow-paintingassociates

The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane (1858) by John Quidor.

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was the Stephen King, or perhaps even the Jay-Z, of nineteenth century American. His book, Life of George Washington, cemented in public memory the iconic image of “the founder of our country.” His Tales of the Alhambra was an international best seller and is still widely sold and read in Granada, Spain. The short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, has created a cottage industry in the river towns of Westchester County, New York – focused on Halloween. Not only was Irving a wildly successful author, but he was also a U.S. Ambassador to Spain, which led to his travel by donkey from Seville to Granada, where he visited the Alhambra and camped out in a room there for several months providing the material for his highly entertaining Tales. My recent trip to Granada persuaded me to download Irving’s collected work and to read the Tales, as well as his ridiculously silly history A History of New York, written under the nom de plume of Diedrich Knickerbocker. Irving was also our Homer – the bard of our national myths.

I crossed paths again with Irving this year when I was invited to be a part of an Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel for the Village of Sleepy Hollow, New York. The panel was brought to the Village by Mayor Ken Wray, and ably led by Developer, Kim Morque, President of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, LLC. The panel was made up of eight talented and congenial real estate professionals, from a variety of disciplines, who spent two days in Sleepy Hollow, walking the study area, interviewing stakeholders, and ultimately presenting to the Village Trustees. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and our presentation seemed to be well received by the Trustees. I am grateful to Kim, my panel colleagues, and Felix Ciampa, Mara Winokur and Kathryn Dionne of the ULI staff who organized the panel, as well as to my good friend and colleague, Dave Stebbins, of Buffalo, who recommended my participation (The complete report will finished in a month or so. When it becomes available I will link to it here). Continue reading

Placemaking as Policy: Gloversville, New York: A Laboratory for the community impact of public space revitalization

IMG_1291

Main Street with the Co-op Market

Gloversville, New York is about fifty miles northeast of Albany at the edge of the Adirondacks. For 150 years it was the center of American glove manufacturing and a thriving commercial hub. Being Gloversville was not unlike being, say, Buggy Whip-ville, and by the last quarter of the twentieth century its classic “Main Street” was hollowed out, with limited economic activity. Today, Gloversville has a population of about 15,000, with a median household income of about $35,000. The downtown has a dollar store and a large number of social service providers – and a lot of empty space. There are a few small industrial firms outside of the downtown, and several long time retailers on the main street. There are more than a half-dozen empty multi-story former glove factories in or immediately adjacent to the downtown.

Glove making must have been a highly lucrative endeavor for many, many years because the architecture and design of the commercial buildings are of very high quality; and most of that built legacy remains – waiting to be reused. The elegant, private Eccentric Club (http://www.eccentricclub.com/wordpress/) looks to be well maintained and is in the middle of the downtown – evidence of the wealth that was generated, and at least some of which, remains there. Continue reading