An article by Jeffrey Cohen in Saturday’s Hartford Courant described some of the difficulty facing the prospects for downtown retail, specifically in and near the city’s fairly new 36-story Hartford 21 building (pictured).

Retail space there fronting Asylum Street is occupied by only two tenants, a YMCA and a new wine shop, which is obliged by state law to close on Sundays. Hartford 21 owner/developer Lawrence Gottesdiener (pictured) has been working to create an additional retail amenity in the space, a grocery store. Much remains vacant. From the piece:

“If we can achieve the market and the wine store, I’ll be satisfied for this year,” Gottesdiener said. “That’s important for the residents.”

“I’m all about the residential. I’m all about downtown. I still think it’s working, but it just takes time,” Gottesdiener said. “We’ve done what we said we were going to do. We’re importing the affluent, we have the sexy people, the wealthy people. I’m excited.”

In an article last June in the New York Times, Gottesdiener was billed as Hartford’s “booster-in-chief.”

Hartford-based residential real estate professional Amy Bergquist (pictured), in a post on her real estate blog, asked, “Doesn’t this [marketing approach] severely limit the size of the pie of who can afford to buy or rent in downtown Hartford and consequently support a retail base?”

“Wouldn’t stores be more inclined,” she continued, “to open in an area where there is a diversity of housing/rental prices, not just high end, because it would mean the potential for a wider range of customers?”

Hartford 21 (pictured), the Courant article stated, is 60 percent full with residents, and adds to what the city’s acting director of Development Services, Mark McGovern, called “a very small, but growing, residential base.” The article lends an impression that the residential base is still too small for some retailers to be convinced their business will be viable. Developers are appropriately pushing for the retail to be open seven days a week, whereas some retailers have come to the table suggesting they remain closed on the weekends.

Cohen called this a “classic chicken-and-egg scenario with residents and retail,” thereby distilling it into a phenomenon developers, residents and business owners just can’t parse. Experience in Springfield (pictured below) has shown that the downtown retail quandary does not necessarily need to be dismissed as merely paradoxical and puzzling. A methodical approach, based on best-guess estimates of what the market can bear, may find success, but it requires careful, tenacious and unexcitable pacing.

Following studies related to the city as a whole, as well as focused on the potential for downtown housing, consultants told Springfield city officials that residents come first, and the retail follows. Proceeding from there is a sort of dance, where some pioneering retailers are lured, followed by increased numbers of residents, followed by more retailers.

Zimmerman/Volk Associates, in its study of the downtown market-rate housing potential a year ago, reported that the denser housing market downtown can’t necessarily support many families. Such residents seeking housing are smaller in number anyway, and less mobile, than the single, urban professional types, and the well-educated empty nesters looking to return to cities. Together, singles and empty nesters comprise nearly 90 percent of what consultant Laurie Volk called a “basic, strong demographic support for significant increases in downtown housing” in just about any American city.

Downtown housing revitalization has to start somewhere, and so ZVA recommended accommodating the relevant demographic—people requiring smaller living space and possibly open to adventure—in the central business district.

There are many factors at play to attract such residents, including but not limited to enhanced public safety enforcement, putting in place straightforward and easy-to-navigate permitting and tax laws for developers, fostering a government that operates above-board, and designing and constructing a functional, attractive, navigable built environment, legible for the pedestrian and motorist alike, at the street level.

Such factors can contribute to the influx, or lack, of an increase in moderate-income downtown residents, which is where the initial push must be to support any kind of thriving retail or pedestrian environment, Springfield officials were told. It’s possible, consultants said, to aspire to a mixed-income environment, not overreaching, but gradually building a community and a sustainable pace for business, residents followed by retail. A mix of income levels among residents is likely better for retail, because it can support a variety of retail types—just like a diverse ecosystem strengthens the whole system.

Forcing or even deceitfully luring retail to enter a market that probably can’t support it is tantamount to prescribed failure. A push to develop street-level commercial life must begin with a hearty influx of residents with some degree of income to spend on the basics. In both Springfield and Hartford, a lot of retail seems to get by without such support, surviving on the workday commerce brought by downtown commuters. This kind of retail alone won’t bring about any revitalization of downtown; instead revitalization requires people dwelling in the spaces and really taking up residence in the best sense.

Over recent years, downtown Hartford (pictured, looking south on Main Street from the library) appears to have achieved an influx of high- or moderate-income residents, and can now possibly boast a fairly significant downtown residential population (whether greater or lesser than Springfield’s). Maybe it is even a sexier and more affluent one than other cities in the region. So why aren’t retailers responding in kind?

It’s possible that retailers are making a go of it downtown, and it isn’t necessarily making the pages of the newspaper, or doesn’t generate much spark or controversial thought. The same might be said of downtown residents pioneering in Hartford who aren’t necessarily affluent or sexy in the eyes of developers, or developers who own less property but are nonetheless taking a steady, patient route toward doing their part to stabilize and improve downtown.

In any case, what may be required to do this residential-retail dance, in addition to other factors mentioned, is a fair degree of tolerance for a struggling, slow-to-change market on the part of the individuals who, faced with a choice, opt to pioneer to live downtown. This isn’t delved into thoroughly in the studies Springfield solicited, but such residents must be more resilient than other types with more complex needs at stake (such as children or elderly relatives at home), capable of finding their way through an urban environment that lacks a degree of commercial identity and cohesion.

Perhaps developers in Hartford are concerned that if action isn’t taken soon to meet the needs and interests of such people, they’ll start hemorrhaging again, away from downtown. And maybe they will, especially if they’re left to believe that everything ought to land in their laps. Downtown needs residents willing to join forces and create some of the commercial identity themselves, just like any neighborhood.

Oz Griebel of the MetroHartford Alliance, admitting impatience, told Cohen, “The ongoing concern … is if you’re going to live downtown, there are certain retail amenities that you want.”

Maybe current downtown residents could be formally surveyed to find out what they would support, and work from there, if it hasn’t already been done. How often do developers or municipal officials assume what a demographic “wants”? We can build many houses of cards upon such beliefs, perpetuating more articles like Saturday’s in the newspaper, lending weight to the criticism of cynics who claim the central cities are dead and ought be abandoned completely.

It would be helpful to continue marketing work not so much to attract, but to help existing downtown residents navigate their own current community, perpetually introducing them to the smaller stores that are already nearby, boosting the existing economy a little, and lending a sense of confidence and momentum to the business community. Where there is an identity, there is more potential for something to take hold and grow. What is downtown Hartford’s residential identity today?

Such an approach could begin to affirm and foster a collective notion of place-based citizenship that reaches beyond individual high-rise luxury towers, or single, disparate downtown city blocks consisting of townhouses or apartment buildings. Is there a residents’ association downtown, for instance? Does it include a diverse mix of residents within a geographic area, and is it building on a vision for itself? Are residents and retailers represented together in any goal-setting entity that has the ear of city officials and developers alike? Is anyone marketing downtown to the people already there?

Commenting on Bergquist’s blog, Real Hartford’s Kerri Provost wrote, “I don’t like the myth that there is no place to get food here. The C-Town is right near me, and they have everything, basically. It’s not an organic joint like Whole Foods, but they do have what most people get from a store– meats, breads, dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables, cereal, ice cream, etc. I think we need to stop envisioning grocery stores only as the big boxes like Stop & Shop.”

Unfortunately, C-Town has the reputation of being the opposite of affluent and sexy, which doesn’t necessarily fit the evolving marketing mold for downtown Hartford, at least as dictated by some. But it is typically inexpensive and the store has a reputation for managing to stay relatively small by today’s grocery store standards, without disrupting walkable areas.

Provost adds that Rose Gourmet, a small grocery shop that carries a mix of organic and conventional items at 69 Pratt Street, is often overlooked. “When a newer fancier store does open,” she commented, “it’s going to probably push Rose out of business, even though they are pretty bustling during lunch time because of their deli. …[A]s a resident who doesn’t want to feel replaced by the ‘affluent and sexy’ imports, I also don’t want to see Hartford’s existing stores driven out by the newer, shinier models.”

Gottesdiener told the Times, “Hartford’s going to decide whether it wants to be in the entertainment business—if so, they will need a whole new [civic center] facility,” he said, referring to an ongoing discussion about whether the downtown XL Center should be replaced outright. “We need this walkable, lively environment that is not replicable in the suburbs, and we need that draw.”

If downtown Hartford is now ostensibly for the affluent and sexy, and so are the walkable, lively environments in the suburbs—like Blue Back Square (pictured)—where will the rest of the people live and shop, and how will they get there? Families with children, for example, simply earning a living wage, need homes and grocery stores, too. Is there a reasonable place for such a demographic in today’s urban setting, or do families prefer to give up on the city, because it just plain doesn’t meet their needs?

As Provost put it bluntly in her comment, “Hartford’s neighborhoods is where it’s at. Downtown is for yuppies!” And yet Provost herself may very well be in the right demographic for downtown market-rate housing. Why isn’t she attracted? She is probably not alone in her sense that yuppies are all that’s wanted in downtown Hartford.

Marketing strictly along those lines is likely to repel more than it attracts, at this point, and finding the right notes to hit must be terribly challenging.

Much more alluring to me is the idea of downtown residents creating their own notions of what makes their place great, primarily including its people, whatever their economic means, or degree of personal physical attractiveness.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 4:27 am and is filed under Blue Back Square, City corridors, Commentary, Community building, Demographics, Development, Downtown, Hartford, Housing, Media, Planning and design, Public spaces, Quality of life, Springfield, Studies and reports, Think tanks, Urban Compass, Urban Land Institute, Urban design, Walkability.