Planting Shrubs to Fix a Foundation

If I had began this blog several years before I actually started it, I would posted many blog entries critiquing and discussing the relatively new area of Victory Park.

Let me compress what could be several posts into the rest of this paragraph. Victory Park is a well-intentioned idea of mixing uses, but was executed so poorly that retail can not survive and the "streets" are empty of people, even when there is an event at the anchor of the area, the American Airlines Center (AAC). The basic premise is that instead of focusing the energy towards the main streets like Houston and Victory Avenue, they made those streets function like alleys and made a central "street", Victory Park Lane, the main retail spine when it should be the alley. Street design made Victory and Houston huge one-ways for transporting large amounts of cars and minimizing the pedestrian experience. The retail is destined to fail exactly because Victory Park Lane is isolated, and it was so by design. The intentions were to give the pedestrian a pleasant walk. But, by ignoring connectivity with the rest of the development AND neighborhood, even pedestrians don't go there, making retail foot traffic sparse if non-existent.

Victory Park Lane, complete with no people out and about.

All that to say this, according to Steve Brown, the Dallas Morning News' Real Estate Editor, Estein and Associates, the property manager of Victory, have hired Trademark Property to revamp the shopping area. From the article:

Critics of the project have lambasted the layout of the retail space and its original focus on high-end merchants and restaurants.

Trademark will immediately begin work on plans to remodel Victory Park’s storefronts along Victory Park Lane. 

The developer also will be looking at how to use undeveloped land in the project for additional retail.

About 130,000 square feet of retail space is contained in the lower floors of buildings in the 75-acre Victory Park project.

Preliminary plans call for a total redesign of the streetscape throughout the project.

...

Fair said with the economy turning the corner and retail sales picking up, the timing is right to redo Victory Park’s retail.

“We are getting more calls from prospective tenants and have been looking for the right retail partner,” he said. “There has to be some momentum for the retailers to get excited.

“We are going to try and make a great retail street where people will want to hang out.

...

Trademark Property has experience with both new projects and redeveloping old ones.

It built the popular Watters Creek shopping and apartment project in Allen. And Trademark is developing the Alliance Town Center regional shopping center in North Fort Worth.

Trademark also has redeveloped shopping malls in Corpus Christi, Santa Fe and Michigan.

I still lambast the layout. Without fixing this, the very fundamental flaw, everything else is lipstick. Until the docks for the buildings line Victory Park Lane and the retail fronts Houston, Victory Avenue, Lamar or Olive, no amount of revamp will be successful. It already hurts Victory enough that the office buildings, which are relatively full, are self-contained. You park inside the building, go up the elevator, work, go down the elevator and leave the building. In downtown, there is decent transit access and many workers who do drive have to park off-site, which at least facilitates some amount of pedestrian activity. That is not the case here.

Unless a total redesign of the streetscape means this fundamental swap from the interior lined by Victory Park Lane to the outside streets, then any other effort is going to fall short.

Finally, looking at the credentials of Trademark, I wonder if they are the right group to even understand what Victory needs. The last two paragraphs list their body of works, but none are in even semi-urban areas. All are suburban, and many of Victory's flaws originate in trying to combine elements of suburban design into the urban realm. The result is that you get neither. The positives of both are negated and the negatives standout. 

Here's an example of what I mean. Victory tried to take a suburban positive, ease of car use, and incorporate that into the development. To accomplish this, they made Houston Street four lanes, one-way with wide lanes, approached Victory Avenue, Lamar Street and Olive Street the same and built garages in every building. But, from an auto user standpoint, it still has the negative of a dense district. Drivers thrive in low density surroundings, while they feel uneasy in denser areas. Also, garages are not convenient, especially compared to on-street and surface parking. This means car-based users avoid Victory because of the hassle.

Also, in an attempt to keep the design on Houston, the original developers fought DART from running the first phase of the current Green Line along Houston. This pushed it on the edge of the neighborhood, where it currently is. What should have been an urban positive instead is now a negative, since the distance is inconvenient to anyone but event goers, as the AAC is the closest building. From downtown, some parts of Victory can be reached faster from the West End Station! This means pedestrians and transit-users avoid Victory because of the hassle.

The Rail Station serving Victory. Note in the distance the AAC.

If drivers don't go and transit users don't go, only those who have to be there go. That means only people who have to go (see workers and residents) are the ones that are there. Neither have sufficient mass to support the level of retail, especially if it is high end. Add in the fact that office is designed to be isolated and self-sufficient, it is easy to see why Victory has empty streets.

I hope an future development addresses the issue, but I don't believe the existing Victory area's street level will achieve any measure of vitality until a first-floor redo is completed. Some infrastructure improvements along the major streets would be beneficial too, but not as critically as the first.

The sad thing is, this is typical Dallas development in its core. You see this on Lower McKinney, parts of Downtown, the Design District and the Cedars. Until developers recognize the benefits of the urban area and work to maximize that, Victory results will continue to be repeated.

People will walk. Main Street and Deep Ellum are examples. Developers can get it right. West Village, One Arts Plaza and Third Rail are examples. But until the city requires this, rather than hope for the best, Victory will be the norm, not West Village.

Why O Why?!?!...or Critique of the City-Owned Convention Center Hotel

I have been putting this one off for a while. I have been sitting on the pictures for near a month. Part of me just doesn't have the energy to once again illustrate why Dallas struggles with having a vibrant urban core. This building violates every solid urban design principle I know and I can't honestly think of one good thing to say about its urbanity. The only positive points are inside.

To that end, I will let the pictures talk for me.


The pedestrian sees only setbacks when they get to the northeast corner.



The big selling point for this hotel was that it was attached to the Dallas Convention Center. In reality, Dallas just got another skywalk/tunnel connection.

At the street level, below the tunnel. Despite the less inviting streetscape. Pedestrians still use this as much as that vaunted skywalk connection.

From the southeast corner, the setback is very clear. The ground-floor retail is not.

An illustration of one of the negative influences of setbacks. This pedestrian is trying to get from the sidewalk to the building. On the way he has to cross huge amounts of grass.

Looking south from the northeast corner.

Looking at the north side of the building, the only thing that is apparent is the valet drive up and the vast amounts of concrete for the driveway.

The east side of the building is nothing but service bays and garage. I have less of an issue with this because it is by the Jefferson Viaduct. Of all the ills, this is the least.

The valet drive dominates the north part of the property, isolating the pedestrian from the hotel.

View of the Lamar side from inside the hotel. No wonder there is little pedestrian activity in this part of downtown. What is there to walk to in this picture?

One of the few things I actually like about the hotel. They use Dallas landmarks and districts to name their conference rooms.

A friend of the family took these pictures. Another feature I like inside the hotel.

The view from inside looking northeast. Several blocks away, downtown begins.

More local pictures. Notice the pictures have no pedestrians. That is the photographers style, but in Dallas it isn't hard to find that shot.

In previous posts, I talked about the emptiness in Deep Ellum. The Omni backs that up.



These pictures are fairly recent. Main Street Gardens opened in 2009.



The view of the conference rooms on the third floor.

View from the north inside the hotel.

More Dallas landmarks.

Thanksgiving Square on the left, Old Red Courthouse on the right, the building where I got married.



Third floor connection to the Convention Center.



The main conference room is named after the city.

The third floor balcony. As usual the interior of a building in the urban core is more inviting than the exterior.

The view from the balcony looking southeast. Notice the univiting streetscape.

Same spot, looking northeast. The streetscape is still barren.

Half the rooms have this view inside. This was taken from the 22nd floor. Notice the large amounts of automobile infrastructure and low amount of urban anything.



From the same spot looking down, you can see the area where the conference rooms and garage are.



The view inside the other half of the rooms is better. Here you can see downtown, of which the most vibrant parts are several blocks away.

Despite being the most expensive hotel rooms in the city, I was amazed at how average they looked. The only "luxury" iten I know of is the bathroom mirror turns into a tv when the power is on.

A typical hallway view.

As noted in other posts, bland stairways with no meaningful connections limit their use. The Omni is no different.

I included pictures of the interior just to show the inside, though in reality, whatever is inside would have zero impact on its urban design features. I have made my objections known about the urban design, setbacks, no street furniture, empty greenspace (or is it brown), lack of pedestrian engagement, auto-dominated features, etc. In some ways, I have come to expect that from new buildings built by the private sector.

My biggest disappointment is that on the one hand, Dallas says it wants to make the urban area more inviting. They mention things that need to be done. Then on the other they produce this. They completely own this property. They could have done anything here. Even just a moving the builing east, bringing the east part of the building adjacent to Lamar St. would have made a big difference. In the end, the City that talks about revitalizing downtown, helped keep the status quo.

Super Bowl and Mayoral Tidbits

In planning circles, it is widely accepted that building public stadiums is rarely the panacea that promoters make them out. Rarely do the economic claims back facts. Rarely does development promised follow. In many cases tax revenues actually decline. The only claim that hasn't statistically been refuted is civic pride and exposure.

Until now, perhaps?

The Dallas Morning News ran a piece that showed the national perception of Arlington after the Super Bowl was virtually the same as before. Before the game, 17.5% of respondents had a positive impression of Arlington, whereas after the game, it was only 14.9%. A neutral impression stayed in the 2% range. 4.6% of respondents before the game had a negative impression, whereas after it was 6.1%. The real telling stat is the no impression. Before the game 73.7% had none, whereas after, it had risen to 74.4%.

Think of that for a moment. Supposedly, on the biggest stage, the host city LOST ground in impression on a national perception list. Of course, it doesn't help that Arlington is just another generic suburban city that has nothing unique but two stadiums and two amusement parks (It has a University and good bones for a lackluster downtown, but they neglect that). And when the messengers of the message from the city to the nation find nothing unique about your city (1st paragraph), then the nation doesn't either.

If this proof (albeit anecdotal) that stadiums don't bring about positive urban development, then I don't know what is.

Moving on, in the paper version of Unfair Park, Jim Shutze, in his story about the politics of the mayors race, makes an astute observation.

In spite of these terrible economic times, Dallas continues to bloom at its heart, from North Oak Cliff to east of downtown around Baylor Hospital, further east in the Henderson Avenue area, north along the Uptown corridor, south into the Cedars.
Well, the city blooms in a circle around the heart, anyway. The heart itself still has problems. Downtown seems to suffer from some kind of chronic a-fib.
The places in the city that boom and bloom have one thing in common. They are centers drawing the kind of people who just like being in the city, who don't want to be separated, rated and gated. It's all about people who like the mix.
None of this is unique to Dallas. It's all stuff that Christopher Leinberger, author of The Option of Urbanism, and others have been writing about and predicting for cities all over America. Leinberger calls it "Seinfeld America"—a place where people like the idea of living stacked up on top of strangers more than living on a cul-de-sac with their cousins.
In fact, that's probably exactly what's wrong with downtown. Still domineered by the old culture, downtown has been redeveloped as a kind of high-rise gated community. So it's boring.

This sums up so many things I have been saying much more concisely than I ever could. Downtown is made up of too many fortress, stand-alone office towers that are doing nothing to contribute to the urban environment. The tunnels statisfy the public realm that should be a true melting pot. And parking lots are the biggest use of land.

Sadly, Dallas will never achieve the urban level it needs as long as that is the case. Downtown should be the hub of the urban core, not the divider. As long as the streets that are pedestrian friendly until it reaches the border and are suburban-commuter friendly and places like Hunt Tower or the Arts District pop up in downtown, it will always be that disjointed urban core that we know today.

Maybe one day, many decades off, that will change. But the old guard will have had to pass and the new will have had to use a lot of tricks to righ the wrongs.

Downtown Dallas parking

Inevitably, every five years or so, the City of Dallas commissions a downtown master plan study. Always, it focuses on the latest in planning at that time, more office, greater car access, more residential units, more street scenes, etc. Also just as inevitable, the study ignores the effects of parking, perhaps the most important aspect of any urban study. Arguably, no other aspect has a greater impact on urban form than parking.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, I have done my own parking inventory. To the defense of those prior plans, doing a parking inventory is difficult. I have been doing since the start of summer. It is not complete, and likely will never be complete. Counting public spaces is the easiest for access. Many public buildings have their own spaces, some of which are easier to enter than others. Even more difficult, a lot of government buildings are shut to all but those who have access cards. And since downtown is in constant flux, surface numbers are constantly changing.

Even the count itself might be off, but only by a little. Counting spaces over and over again is monotonous and ripe for miscounting. However, any errors I have made are minimal.

I chronicled everything onto Google maps. Since it isn't quite a GIS capable application, I had to separate them into different land uses. While the information contains more than just parking, it isn't anything that isn't already known somewhere else. At least the parking information is likely to be unique. If anyone has it, it is unknown to me and to several others who would know where to find that info.

First, here's surface parking, which contain over 22,000 spaces.
Surface 1
Surface 2
Surface 3
Surface 4
Next up, garage spaces, which contain the most spaces in downtown at just shy of 30,000.

Garages

Office spaces is the third highest space holder at just shy of 10,000.

Class A

Class B & C

Government and similar institutions comprise 5,500 spaces.

Government

Cultural, education and other attractions

With new residential development comes new residential parking, or roughly 4,000 spaces.

Residential

And finally a grouping of the other land uses add another 4,000 spaces. And yes, in Dallas, even the parks have parking, or more accurately, they are underground garages with green space on top.

Hotel
Parks and Plazas
Vacant
Retail and Misc.
And perhaps the most overlooked part of any parking system, and arguably the most important is on-street parking. Since it isn't Google Maps friendly, I have nothing to post. It is in Excel format. There are less than 2,500 spaces in the 1.3 sq mile downtown area. When you analyze the locations, you see that the major streets have surprisingly little. More on that later.

Now to the commentary. There is an over abundance of surface parking, the antithesis of an urban area. The dead zones created by surface parking is incredible. In many ways, they create a de facto boundary, clearly delineating one zone from another. It is no accident that the vibrant areas tend to be without surface parking in large numbers. But make no mistake, even small amounts can have bad effects. Large amounts are disastrous.

In order to get to healthy proportions in downtown, that number needs to be one-third of its current total. The positive news from such an over supply is that redevelopment is easy on a surface lot. However, given the tract record of urban development in Dallas, it doesn't mean it will be a good addition to the urban environment. Without any comprehensive guidelines on what is good versus bad, downtown will see just as many bad addition like Hunt Towers and the Commerce side of the Merc as we will of the good development like Third Rail Lofts and One Arts Plaza. Seeing the poor development of the south side of Uptown around Lower McKinney, I won't hold my breath.

Garages, like development, can be hit or miss. Depending upon design, they can be conducive to the urban area or just as easily rip it apart. The garage catty corner from the new Main Street Garden park is a great example of a bad one. At the street level, it is pitiful. There is nothing that engages the pedestrian and makes the entire block feel longer to traverse than should be in a good urban area. There is no mix of uses, unless you count the car wash in the interior or the dry cleaners at the skywalk level (I don't). Like surface parking, this garage creates an artificial boundary, signifying the end of the Main Street District.

Meanwhile, at Main and Akard, just a few blocks away sits another public garage, although you'd never know it. At the ground level is a CVS, Jason's Deli and the vehicular entrance, the only indication there is a garage there. Above the car park are residential units. If you were to look up at the garage section, you'd see the design was coherent with the rest of the buildings. In other words, it looks like a building, not a monolithic garage.

The final component of a public parking plan are the on-street spaces. No other parking in the automobile age is as vital to an urban are than on-street for many reasons. The convenience of quickly finding a space is important for retailers and shoppers. Stopping, heading in the store, purchasing you product and leaving is the bread and butter of on-street parking that simply isn't there for off-street except in the most immediate spaces. Even still is hard to beat the pulling up to the curb when you have to pull into the lot and pay.

The second benefit is extended to pedestrians. On-street parking provides a buffer between cars and sidewalk-users. It isn't comfortable walking next to several one-ton machines going on at 40 miles-an-hour.

A final primary benefit comes in the aesthetic. A street full of parked cars appear to have more activity than streets without. And in a common theme of urban areas, activity begets more activity.

In downtown Dallas, on-street parking is too scarce. Were I in charge, I could easily double the amount of street parking. They are rare for two main reasons. For every property that wants vehicular access, a curb cut is needed. When you add a curb cut, you have to eliminate at least two meters. And that's just for one entry point. It is more common to have multiple entry points, which eliminates several spaces. In the eastern end of downtown, there are several small property owners who have surface lots, even adjacent to another small surface lot. Each has its own curb cut which means on-street parking is rare in that part of town.

Heck, were I a surface parking lot operator, I would try to have as many curb cuts as possible. That way you are more likely to park and give me money in my lot than park on the street. There are many lots that have entrances every few feet. In some instances, these entrances are no longer in use and have spaces on the private side, but the street still has no meter. Sadly these practices just encourages nobody to park at all downtown, leaving the area empty.

The other big player in a lack of street parking is the traffic engineer. Their ilk are primarily concerned with one thing, moving as many cars as possible in as little time as possible. There are several streets where on-street parking has been removed from one side. And, at a time when there are the most car users, the remaining on-street parking is outlawed.

Think about that for a minute. In rush hour, where there are the most cars and some drivers need a convenient place to quickly park, the spaces don't allow parking. The City actually has a policy that encourages people to NOT spend money downtown. Need a gallon of milk? Well don't stop at the convenient 7-11 on Commerce Street on your way home to the suburbs. Spend your money there, not in downtown Dallas.

These traffic engineers want to keep adding lanes, while simultaneously leaving these lanes free from anything but moving cars. Very few retailers are going to go anywhere without some convenient parking spaces for prospective customers. Streets like Pearl or Griffin, which have six to seven lanes have very little meters.

Until this relationship between encouraging off-street parking and discouraging on-street is fixed, the urban area will continue to suffer. While other people, like Donald Shoup, can effectively worry about pricing, Dallas is not there yet because there is not an ample supply of it. You can't price something right until you have an ample amount of it.

Which brings us back to the plans. None of the downtown Dallas plans have really addressed this issue, including the current plan. You want to encourage retail, you need to give them convenient parking. In an urban area, you can't depend solely upon pedestrian traffic, just as you can't depend solely on auto traffic. You need a mix. It is hard to get that without on-street parking. You want to encourage more street activity, more residential and more visitors, on-street is an added component of that. Any plan that wants those occurrences, but doesn't address the parking issue will ultimately come up short in accomplishing those goals.