  Bussey Member Username: Bussey Post Number: 412 Registered: 12-2003 |
Have you been looking at Vergara's stuff again... Lovely work though, seriously. I wish that these type of photos could be spread throughout the governments across SE MI. We need urban growth boundaries NOW! | ||
Mayor_sekou Member Username: Mayor_sekou Post Number: 340 Registered: 09-2006 |
"We need urban growth boundaries NOW!" Im all for that. Lets get some London style green belts surrounding the city to kill off the exurbs. Good stuff though. | ||
Mind_field Member Username: Mind_field Post Number: 658 Registered: 10-2003 |
Is part of the Fountain Walk mall REALLY going to be demolished? Wow! What a collosal waste of resources. | ||
Cman710 Member Username: Cman710 Post Number: 65 Registered: 07-2006 |
Lowell, the latest webisode is great work. Thanks for taking the time to put it together and post it. How old are the sections of Fountain Walk that are being demolished? It appears unusual that such a development would be demolished so soon. Also, is my sense correct that parts of the development will remain, and that only sections are being demolished? | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 1985 Registered: 10-2003 |
You apparently are not familiar with the Detroit Developers' Mantra: Demolish it, and they will come. | ||
Andysrc Member Username: Andysrc Post Number: 147 Registered: 07-2005 |
Very interesting. When I moved to Michigan I lived in Novi. That was almost 5 years ago and the Fountain Walk was not yet completed. I hated driving over to that part of town because of the incredibly bad traffic and it felt like I had to find my way through a maze just to get anywhere. I wonder if any lessons will be learned from any of this. I hope so. | ||
Thejesus Member Username: Thejesus Post Number: 390 Registered: 06-2006 |
I never understood the point of Fountain Walk...right across the street, you have the nicest shopping mall in the region... | ||
Thnk2mch Member Username: Thnk2mch Post Number: 541 Registered: 02-2006 |
Lowell, Fine work indeed. To answer one of your questions in this wonderful webisode, no, community cannot be contrived in a corporate board room. | ||
Udmphikapbob Member Username: Udmphikapbob Post Number: 233 Registered: 07-2004 |
Great job as always, Mr. Boileau! Fountain Walk's greatest problem, IMHO, is it's design. You can't find what's in those interior spaces from the outside. The external stores and restaurants are doing fine, but the internal spaces can't draw traffic. Besides, as stated above, what sense does an OUTDOOR mall make across the street from a nice enclosed one? I think that one of the reasons these faux downtowns struggle is that the people who move into the surrounding residences aren't "downtowny" type people. They'll buy a new townhouse in Novi because it's got good schools and it'll be a nice investment. Then they'll get in the car and drive to Somerset. The target audience for a successful, walkable, mixed-use development is going to prefer the authentic thing - in Royal Oak or Birmingham, most likely. | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 1987 Registered: 10-2003 |
Good stuff, as always, Lowell. I really enjoy how you tried to juxtapose similar building types and styles. The causation is not readily apparent just from looking at the photos, but you aptly suggest that the new, contrived development is wasteful when there are many perfectly fine buildings that are under/unutilized. I don't necessarily think that the new "town center" developments are inherently flawed or geared for failure. There are a plethora of these that are quite successful here in the DC area. Then again, unlike Novi, the new-urban developments here are not necessarily automobile-oriented, and are often within a couple blocks of a subway station. Many of these, including developments in Bethesda and Clarendon (Arlington) are built on th existing street grid and interact with their existing context. I agree, though, that the blank-wall effect does nothing to help Fountain Walk, nor do the cheap exteriors suggest any sort of permanence. Fountain Walk, to me, just seems like another throw-away strip mall with cartoony embellishments to suggest the "feel" of a true urban environment. Architects and developers need to wise up. The average person might not be able to expound upon design principles, but they're not so stupid as to ignore the differences between good and bad design. | ||
Johnnny5 Member Username: Johnnny5 Post Number: 411 Registered: 06-2005 |
Due to the inferior location, lack of Novi Road frontage and horrible design Fountainwalk was doomed from day one. Luckily it's failure is the exception in the area. Most of the other retail/entertainment businesses seem to be doing relatively well considering the economy and the amount of competition. | ||
Hybridy Member Username: Hybridy Post Number: 44 Registered: 08-2006 |
wow what a waste of resources indeed the just finished converting an older indoor mall into a trendy small-town feel outdoor mall with condos on the north side of milwaukee supposedly works great in warm climates and was bustling when i visited over thanksgiving maybe novi should hop on the vicious merry-go-round of hilarity http://www.bayshoretowncenter. com/ | ||
Kathinozarks Member Username: Kathinozarks Post Number: 66 Registered: 11-2006 |
Thanks for the new webisode Lowell. You put in tons of work and it is appreciated. The Scott mansion is immense! Is it going to be saved? | ||
Fareastsider Member Username: Fareastsider Post Number: 21 Registered: 08-2006 |
Excellent Work I feel you take what I see and want to express and present it all to often. I love your work and it inspires me to create some of my own. | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 517 Registered: 04-2006 |
Cherry Hill Village in the farm fields of Canton shares a lot of the same problems as Fountain Walk. Void of activity, everyone drives several miles to shop at Kroger or Meijers. The place built for small neighborhood markets lie empty. | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1823 Registered: 12-2003 |
Thanks for the pictures Lowell! This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart (for more than one reason). I haven't been following this nearly as closely since I moved to South Carolina, but I might be able to help shed some light on the facts. (BTW - I moved not because I don't like Detroit, or because I couldn't find a job, but because my significant other found a great opportunity elsewhere, and her field only opens up a handful of jobs every year.) Just to make sure everybody is clear, there are two commercial developments in Novi that Lowell took pictures of. Many people confuse them. One is Fountain Walk, the other is Main Street. Fountain walk is north of 96 and west of Novi Rd. Main Street is near the original crossroads of Novi at Grand River and Novi Rd. These links show it graphically: Fountain Walk: http://maps.google.com/maps?f= q&hl=en&q=cabaret+drive,+novi, +mi&ie=UTF8&z=15&ll=42.489884, -83.483477&spn=0.013481,0.0432 59&t=h&om=1 Main Street: http://maps.google.com/maps?f= q&hl=en&q=Main+Street,+novi,+m i&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=42.478127,-8 3.471439&spn=0.006742,0.021629 &t=h&om=1 A little history about both: Fountain Walk was built on land that was previously largely forested. It is directly adjacent to the West Oaks shopping centers and close by the well known and successful 12 Oaks mall (still Taubman owned). It was planned as a lifestyle center, not as a new downtown. Main Street is actually a number of different projects, some of them basically unrelated except by geography. There are the commercial/office mixed use buildings that Lowell showed. (http://www.detroityes.com/webi sodes/2006/08-ISO-communities/ 012.htm) There is the area adjacent where Adiamo's and Second City are. There are 2 medium density condo developments. There is also a restaurant/retail building that fronts Novi Rd that was built in conjunction with other retail and all of the "ye old" streets without buildings. Much of this land was put together from land the city of Novi had owned and much of it was an old inexpensive low-density subdivision of sorts. It was planned as a new downtown. Both of the streets (Main and Market) in Lowell's picture (#12 in the webisode) are actually public streets maintained by the city. Both Fountain Walk and Main Street failed in a sense. Fountain Walk has some very successful tenants (Emagine Theatre for example) and a lot of vacancies. I think Udmphikapbob has a pretty good bead on many of the problems. Fountain Walk went bankrupt, and the new owner is planning a number of changes to try to revive the shopping center. In addition to the demolition of some of the vacant area, plans were to introduce limited auto traffic to the interior walkways. I don't know how plans might have changed in the last 3 months. Read the public record here: Planning Commission Summary: http://ci.novi.mi.us/Resources /Library/Minutes/Planning/2006 /as060614.htm Planning Commission Minutes: http://ci.novi.mi.us/Resources /Library/Minutes/Planning/2006 /060614.htm City Council Minutes: http://ci.novi.mi.us/Resources /Library/Minutes/Council/2006/ 060710.htm If you want to go back in time, you can search for minutes pertaining to the original here: http://www.cityofnovi.org/Reso urces/Library/Minutes/MinutesA rchiveFrameset.htm Search for: "SP98-16" or "98-16" (The original site plan number) or "Village Oaks," "Nova," "Galleria," or "Fountain Walk" (Various names the project has been known by.) The Main Street Project that included the building in Lowell's picture and the building that Red, Hot, & Blue and 5th Ave (aka Main Street Court) is in also went bankrupt. Various parts of the project fell into different ownership. The owners of the vacant land are now attempting to develop a largely residential mixed-use project. (As far as I know the residential projects to the south and east of the area are successful.) I am not nearly as familiar with this project, as I left the area in September, and most of the actual work has been in the last couple of months. You can read the record here: Planning Commission Summary: http://ci.novi.mi.us/Resources /Library/Minutes/Planning/2006 /as060927.htm Planning Commission Minutes: http://ci.novi.mi.us/Resources /Library/Minutes/Planning/2006 /060927.htm City Council Minutes: http://ci.novi.mi.us/Resources /Library/Minutes/Council/2006/ 061113.htm You can also search for Main Street etc here, but you are going to find a lot of things, many unrelated: http://www.cityofnovi.org/Reso urces/Library/Minutes/MinutesA rchiveFrameset.htm Try "95-53" or SP95-53," this is one of the site plan numbers that was previously attached to the original project. | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1824 Registered: 12-2003 |
Now for my personal opinion about Main Street and Fountain Walk. IMHO one of the reasons that Fountain Walk and Main Street both failed is that they came at the same time. Novi has spent a lot of civic energy since the 1980s trying to get a center. (Novi Town Center shopping center is actually part of the result.) Main Street was a big deal in the mid 90s, and from what I know about it, was an interesting public/private partnership. Fountain Walk came around a couple of years later and was basically a completely private development. (Also not intended to be mixed use.) I believe that one thing contributing to their collective demise was confusion about the project in many people's minds. The image of Fountain Walk's cartoony lifestyle center polluted Main Street's attempt to get a "city center" image. They may also have split some tenants. I don't know if either of the projects could have survived if the other never came about, but my sense is that Fountain Walk hurt Main Street. In addition, the design on a more macro scale makes for some huge difficulties. There are few walkable connections to anything outside of the development in either case. Main Street is sandwiched between Grand River (speed limit in the area is about 40-45, and will all be 5 lane in a few years) and the railroad. There are two condo developments close by, but no other connections to residential areas where created. Fountain Walk is between 12 Mile (~180' blvd) and I-96. The condos in Lowell’s first 2 pictures on this page are actually across 12 Mile: http://www.detroityes.com/webi sodes/2006/08-ISO-communities/ 007.htm Focusing on Main Street...(As a lifestyle center, Fountain Walk had no chance of creating community IMHO, its failure is the vacancy.) There are no civic institutions in the area except a fire station. (No churches, no theatres, no city offices, no museums, no schools) The civic center is about a mile away on Ten Mile. There is no parkland (except a small cemetery across Novi Rd.); except for the streets, there is no public space. Of course there is no transit (not even SMART) -- but the CSX rail line is basically next door, so commuter rail to Northville, Plymouth and then either Detroit or the airport is possible. Main Street as it stands right now is basically a food court, since bars and restaurants are most of the big tenants. Community requires more than food and drink. Despite the discouraging economics, and the prejudice, and the physical decay, IMO Detroit's neighborhood business districts offer more community, even if they don't offer much more. Ignoring scale downtown Detroit also surpasses Novi's main street. In fact, I'd say the retail environment is very similar. Dominated by bars and restaurants. Busy around lunch and with a big weekend crowd, but hard to to much shopping. If you have a car, Twelve Oaks is only a mile away (through some of the heaviest peak traffic in the area). There is shopping nearby. But if you are going to get in a car, is it really that much different to get in a car in downtown Detroit and go 10 miles to Fairlane or Northland? Downtown Detroit has public spaces, it has public institutions, it has many public gatherings. It seems that the only things that will ever fit into Novi's Main Street are those things that will be able to make the developer a profit. | ||
Lowell Board Administrator Username: Lowell Post Number: 3406 Registered: 10-2003 |
Great comments all and thank you for the kind remarks. Following up on Jsmeyers, one thing that kept striking me as I evolved the webidsode was how so many the old commercial buildings had residential housing atop them and most certainly were built in response to demand rather than in anticipation. Why a Fountain Walk or Main Street [and Wixom] didn't follow that pattern [residence above], which would have guaranteed them a modicum of life, activity, community and street traffic, is beyond me. I think they would have found a demand for such housing as it would offer walkable access to a lot of basic needs and entertainment not to mention being a stable income source while the retail is hopefully filling up. Instead, they built the town centers first and then built [and are building residential nearby]. In the case of Main Street, I think they have a chance as there is finally a bit of a residential community of townhouse rentals adjacent and walkable to the town center. Ironically, just as we hear about downtown over and over here, there is no walkable grocery store - except for a Japanese store featuring sushi and imported items. There was a Trader Vic's there when it opened, a massive Nino Salvaggio wannabee, that failed miserably mainly through poor management. If you even saw their stale deli items, you never came back. But also the nearby townhouses had not even been started so they relied totally on drive up. Other basic needs retail, post office, hardware store, general goods, laundry etc. are missing. Churches and other institutions are just more big box affairs surrounded by faceless parking lots. The challenge downtown, where there is a similar influx of strangers in search of community, is not nearly as daunting. As Jsmeyers notes, there are churches, even a synagogue, post offices, YMCA, clubs and other institutions built in and steeped in history and tradition. | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1825 Registered: 12-2003 |
Is building new really destroying or hurting what we already have? I say unequivocally yes! Reason #1: We are not growing. If our population was growing, then we would probably need to pave farms and forests to build new houses. But we are not. Some people believe that a big part of the US economy is just shuffling money around building new houses (James Howard Kunstler for example http://www.kunstler.com/). I tend to think that building houses and cars is responsible for between 75 and 90 percent of the SE Michigan economy. If you think of the SE Michigan housing market as one market, then the best homes are going to go for the highest prices, and the cheapest homes are going to go for the lowest. If you have more homes than households, than at the cheapest end, the cost of maintaining a home will be higher than the rent, or more expensive than the value of the home. On a micro scale, it is the sound economic decision to abandon these homes. Where are the best homes? In places like Novi (if you want a yard) or places like Royal Oak and Detroit (if you want a loft/condo/etc). Where are the worst homes? The oldest neighborhoods in Detroit (near east side for example) and inner ring suburbs. Once you add in prejudice and schools (not that these are unrelated) it becomes quite obvious where the best homes are. It is basically a game of musical chairs where a new expensive home gets built, and a family moves out of a cheaper home. Another family makes a step up and leave a even cheaper home, and so on, until a POS shack somewhere gets left empty (or to otherwise homeless squatters with no means to maintain it). If you take this to the extreme, the otherwise homeless squatters are probably leaving the worst of the squatting places for newly abandoned homes. Now if that new home doesn't get built, what would happen? Hopefully everybody would take the money they were going to invest in a new home and invest in into their existing homes, improving and expanding them. Maybe they would decide that their money is better invested in an entrepreneurial endeavor than a bigger home. I believe that would improve the SE Michigan economy. Is a growth boundary the answer? I don’t think it wouldn’t be a bad idea, but on its own, it wouldn’t do much good. The more important things are tax policy and infrastructure investment. Michigan tax policy is causing many of our problems. Since local governments are funded largely by property taxes, and property taxes are capped from increasing, developing vacant land is the best way to finance government services. Some cities, like Novi have done a good job doing different types of building (industrial, residential, retail, office), so that this is relatively sustainable on a local level. Other growing communities have attempted to build only residential, and have found that they require more services than they want to pay in taxes. Unfortunately many communities don’t have any vacant land at all, and are basically completely stuck (Royal Oak comes to mind). Property tax policy also lets landowners in hang on to vacant land for long periods of time waiting for a lucrative offer that may never come. And tax policy actually encourages the demolition of structures in order to lower taxes. As many homeowners in well-to-do Detroit neighborhoods know, caps on property tax growth through a huge monkey wrench into real estate transactions. The seller usually had been paying a much lower tax rate than the buyer will be required to. I wonder how many real estate deals of all sorts have fallen through because of this. Infrastructure investment in SE Michigan has been F’ed up for more than a half century. SE Michigan has always been using scarce infrastructure money to finance its own demise. Some early examples include street widenings in Detroit. Buildings on Gratiot and Woodward were moved, demolished, or scraped thinner to widen those roads at great public cost, when the money could have been invested in building subways under them to replace the interurbans that ran on them. The city of Detroit somehow decided it would be a good idea to extend water and sewer to land that it could not annex. My guess as to why? The decision makers at the time were making a lot of money developing houses that were exempt from paying city taxes. The trends continue. Despite our partial adoption of a fix it first policy, much road work that is in established places like Detroit includes widening and is largely to facility the movement of vehicles through a place, not the improvement of access to a place. Transit investment in such glaringly obvious (even easy) places as the Michigan/94 corridor or the Woodward corridor, or downtown Detroit is a monumental challenge. Meanwhile, $30 million are spent on one new highway interchange in Novi and another $30 Million is planned for 2 miles away in Wixom. Why? So Fountain Walk can rent retail space, and Providence/St. Joe move hospital functions out of Detroit and Southfield and into Southwestern Oakland County. Also so forests can be turned into subdivisions and corporate parks where workers who used to live in Oak Park and drive to Southfield can get a short commute and a nice new big house. My biggest problem with all of this (other than the collective inefficiency of the expenditures) is that the end result is a region that works less efficiently. Joe Smith gets a faster commute from Northville Township to Wixom, but a company looking to expand or relocate sees that there aren’t enough workers unless they look 50 miles in each direction. The tragedy is that 90% of what is driving this is individual decisions that are made for an individual good. Those decisions cannot be faulted. We have to look at the other 10%. I believe that is comprised mostly of three things: Collective weakness, collective myopia, and corruption. In short we are too weak and short-sighted to do any differently. I believe that groups like TRU and the MLUI are working hard to change this but unfortunately the corruption of friendships with public officials, bribes, campaign contributions and the like from those who stand to profit the most from this system are difficult to overcome. IMHO it is one of the great prejudices of the region that officials like Colman Young or Kilpatrick are looked at as being so corrupt while thousands of suburban politicians finance their every activity with money made in the deconstruction of the region. (Message edited by jsmyers on December 11, 2006) | ||
Pam Member Username: Pam Post Number: 745 Registered: 11-2005 |
Main Street has a Better Health Market. | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1826 Registered: 12-2003 |
Good question. One of the primary answers in Novi is the highest priority long term goal of the current city council:
(http://www.cityofnovi.org/Gove rnment/Council/Resolutions.asp) Basically, in my opinion, this means that Novi doesn't want those people, their need for services, and their traffic. Even in places where prejudice and nimbyism isn't a factor, there are still stupid, draconian zoning laws that often make it difficult if not impossible. (Even in Detroit) There is also the issue of who is developing these things. In the old days, a couple of friends or brothers who saved up could build a small building. Or a shop-keeper would expand his place and search for new sources of income. Now, these projects are built my large developers finances through huge banks, insurance companies, and pension funds. Most large developers don't do the other things. They either build retail, or office, or residential. PS - Lowell, I'm Jsmyers, not "Jsmeyers." Over 1800 posts in 3 years, and people are still getting it wrong.  | ||
Lowell Board Administrator Username: Lowell Post Number: 3408 Registered: 10-2003 |
Well that's a start Pam. I could do well with the Japanese store [mmm suuuu-shiii] and the Better Health, but I wonder how many neighbors would even look in them? Got milk, got Tide, kitty litter, beer, diapers? Hop in the car... | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1827 Registered: 12-2003 |
I meant to add to my last post that the source of financing and size of developer is something that Jane Jacobs writes about (in a way) in her Death and Life of Great American Cities. She argues that cataclysmic money is a bad thing and describes many little guys doing little things is the source of a great city. She also writes about diversity, having both low and high rent spaces side by side. | ||
Apbest Member Username: Apbest Post Number: 334 Registered: 03-2006 |
in response to the confusion over whats happening to the fountain walk, heres a DetroitNew article from june...its not on their website anymore so it's from Google cache. http://72.14.203.104/search?q= cache:zRuOtZt6prcJ:www.detnews .com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FA ID%3D/20060627/BIZ/606270379/1 001+fountain+walk+novi&hl=en&g l=us&ct=clnk&cd=7&client=firef ox-a parts of fountain walk are still pretty successful and have lots of young novi kids (pre-teen before kids start just going to each other's houses and getting wasted) wearing hollister going to a hookah "bar" that charges COVER and a Bdubs, etc | ||
Udmphikapbob Member Username: Udmphikapbob Post Number: 235 Registered: 07-2004 |
Jsmyers: I would like to donate some funds to go towards printing out your lengthy post above and stapling it to the foreheads of every State Rep and County Commissioner in Michigan. Although, given what I've learned in my 28 years in this state, the place they'd be most likely to see it is somewhere north of their own colons. | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1828 Registered: 12-2003 |
Thanks | ||
Andysrc Member Username: Andysrc Post Number: 148 Registered: 07-2005 |
Hybridy
The same company just opened an outdoor mall north of Dayton called The Greene. I went there when I was visiting my parents over Thanksgiving. It was definitely packed. I hoping it will succeed. A few things I noticed about The Greene that were not present in Fountain Walk: 1. You could drive on the streets throughout The Greene which means more stores are visible from your vehicle. Somehow this also made it feel more like a real neighborhood. 2. It's much larger with many more stores. 3. It has greenspace in the middle which was being used for a large Christmas tree. This helped add to the feeling that this was a community, not a mall with the roof ripped off. 4. There is (or will be, I don't think it's open yet) residential living within The Greene. I believe it will be a few floors of luxury apartments above some of the retail. Having constant foot traffic will help build sense of community. It's a very interesting concept to me. On one hand, it would be great to live in a thriving retail area with foot traffic and a walkable neighborhood. On the other, it lacks many of the things that I'd want in a community, such as a local bar (not a $25 per plate restaurant), a liquor store, a grocery store, drug store, doctors' offices etc... As much as the place appealed to me, ultimately I don't know if it could ever feel "natural." I think it would always feel like I was living at the mall. | ||
Bussey Member Username: Bussey Post Number: 419 Registered: 12-2003 |
I need to make a new political party. For years I have been preaching for Condos and Apts above Big Box stores, i.e. Meijer or Home Depot and also for capping of the freeways in Detroit. | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1829 Registered: 12-2003 |
This is part of the change that is proposed for Fountain Walk. | ||
Danny Member Username: Danny Post Number: 5261 Registered: 02-2004 |
THE PRICE OF SPRAWL!!! Traditional farmland has been destroyed. Acres of forest had been wiped out, Tornadoes destroying your homes. People trying to escape from the ghettos of the inner cities. Big Box stores are being built up and obesity has been contributed due to more driving. | ||
Bussey Member Username: Bussey Post Number: 420 Registered: 12-2003 |
Tornadoes? | ||
Swingline Member Username: Swingline Post Number: 637 Registered: 11-2003 |
Lowell stated: I have not researched Novi's zoning from the 90's, but I would bet that during that time, and probably still today, the kind of dense mixed use of which Lowell promotes for this project was completely illegal. While Novi Main Street was probably developed as a PUD, even with that kind of development tool, most township commissioners and planning boards simply do not possess the vision to see much beyond conventional suburban design models. Elevated above all else in those models is the isolation of residential zoning from all other uses. As Euclidean zoning exploded across the country during the post-war boom times, every growing community drank the Kool-aid of the purported merits of the geographical separation of zoning uses. SE Michigan has suffered tremendously because of these policies. States like North Carolina, Florida and California are way ahead of us in revising their development models for their suburban communitities and it shows when it comes to liveability indexes. Attractive suburban communities attract nice things like jobs. Novi Main Street was definitely an opportunity lost. There still remains some undeveloped parcels. Perhaps it's not too late to design something that elevates that project to something more than a strip mall in disguise. | ||
Eastsidedog Member Username: Eastsidedog Post Number: 863 Registered: 03-2006 |
That's quite a post Jsmyers. Just finished reading "Death and Life of Great American Cities" -- a life-changing book. Still holds true today. Lowell, I agree it's very interesting how you juxtaposed vacant spaces both old and new. It must have required a lot of time to find properties in the city that matched the suburban counterparts. I'm assuming you shot the suburban shots then the city? or was it vice versa? or do you just mix and match from a large repository of images? I'm curious. My favorite shot is the shots of the old house dying and the new one being born -- neither had roofs -- there are even parallels in the rooflines. http://www.detroityes.com/webi sodes/2006/08-ISO-communities/ 011.htm It's clear to see that new house won't live nearly as long as the old one. | ||
Gsgeorge Member Username: Gsgeorge Post Number: 38 Registered: 08-2006 |
"In Search of Community" is a beautiful work. If only this kind of insight was more common among the type of people who build Fountainwalks and Subrubias... I haven't read most of the posts on this thread but I wanted to chime in and let you all know about Troy's plan for the coming decades. They are attempting to turn Big Beaver into a 'world-class' boulevard. read more here: http://www.birchlerarroyo.com/ Clients/troy.htm I think what we have here is a case of hybridizing the big-box faux-downtowns of Novi and Wixom with common-sense planning practices of the last two thousand years. I hope this is successful, but obviously it will cater to the upper-tier of society. It is interesting that Troy describes the plan as "a very dramatic and forward-thinking idea." Sure, when compared with the last 50 years of suburban planning this is dramatic, but it harkens back to traditional planning practices that have been in place for thousands of years--the community marketplace, public squares, pedestrian-scaled environments, etc. Any thoughts?? | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1830 Registered: 12-2003 |
Novi's zoning map here: http://www.cityofnovi.org/Comm unity/Maps.asp#Zoning and code: http://www.municode.com/resour ces/gateway.asp?pid=11201&sid= 22 (Look in Appendix A) Novi has a few mixed use zoning districts. The main one, known as "town center" was on the books when main street was first developed. The regulations are much more complicated and restrictive than they might be in other similar communities in the nation.
Look more carefully at the links in my post. It is moving forward, with retail, residential, and office. I just noticed this link on the City's website: http://www.cityofnovi.org/Busi ness/MainStreetDevelopment.asp | ||
Eastsidedog Member Username: Eastsidedog Post Number: 864 Registered: 03-2006 |
Gsgeorge, maybe a giant red erector set sculpture and a few well placed fountains and plazas along Big Beaver could liven things up? They could even close off half of Big Beaver for pedestrians. | ||
Dhugger Member Username: Dhugger Post Number: 115 Registered: 03-2005 |
Jsmyers or anyone: What is a 'PUD'? "While Novi Main Street was probably developed as a PUD" | ||
Swingline Member Username: Swingline Post Number: 638 Registered: 11-2003 |
PUD = planned unit development | ||
Gsgeorge Member Username: Gsgeorge Post Number: 39 Registered: 08-2006 |
eastsidedog, I get your point. I still think Washington Boulevard's 'revitalization' is pretty different than what Troy is proposing, which includes the construction of dozens of new buildings, miles of new pedestrian paths and parkways, outdoor marketplaces, and a number of town squares. This is not just a few ornamentations, it's a total reconstruction of the suburban environment, and for that I give them credit. I don't see Novi trying something as ambitious as this. Fountainwalk and "Main Street" are really no different than the thousands of other big-box/strip malls/shopping centers in the area, except they're just covered with fancy tilework and facades remniscent of what a REAL city looks like. Troy is trying something almost entirely anti-suburban. Parking underground and out of the way, street-side businesses, etc. Take a look at the website. It's too bad that fixing suburbia means having to build a city from the bottom up, but at least they're not trying to pass off a fancy mall as some kind of 'town center' or 'Main Street.' | ||
Eastsidedog Member Username: Eastsidedog Post Number: 866 Registered: 03-2006 |
It looks like Troy is trying to get in on the urban living action. A little Royal Oak jealousy perhaps? | ||
Milwaukee Member Username: Milwaukee Post Number: 373 Registered: 08-2006 |
It seems like the exact opposite thing has happened in my community. In the webisode, the old main street area's were thriving where as the new town center's were failing. I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee called Whitefish Bay. There is a main street called Silver Spring Drive, it is lined with mostly older 30's and 40's buildings. This was the traditional downtown of Whitefish Bay, but now the street has many vacant storefronts. Just down the block there is a new town center called Bayshore. Hundreds of new high priced shops and restaurants. Really weird timing for this webisode for me and Milwaukee. Thanks Lowell, I really liked the old storefront photos. | ||
Kris Member Username: Kris Post Number: 7 Registered: 03-2006 |
The building in the second pic on page 4 is not in Hamtramck. | ||
Erikto Member Username: Erikto Post Number: 493 Registered: 11-2003 |
Thanks for the tour, Lowell. The Novi site at the beginning of the tour is downright eerie- abandoned but so modern. Another NYT writer who has suggested the American economy has been depending too much on simply buying and selling houses to one another is Paul Krugman. | ||
French777 Member Username: French777 Post Number: 35 Registered: 10-2006 |
BUT the Village of Rochester Hills is very nice and is full !!!!! | ||
Cman710 Member Username: Cman710 Post Number: 104 Registered: 07-2006 |
I know this is kind of late, but Jsmyers, I just got to read some of your posts, and I have to say that they are informative and well thought out. I probably would not agree with 100% of what you have to say, but I do think you have done an absolutely terrific job of articulating many of the most important issues facing the region. What do you think about the following political problem: In Detroit, the one party system (Republicans have no chance) almost ensures that voters will not face meaningful choice at election time, but only at the margins. This weakens the political system because the lack of competition encourages cronyism and corruption, and reduces incentives for politicians to make meaningful changes in policy. After all, crime can go up, city services can get worse, and you can get reelected. Given the dramatic degree to which Detroit is a Democratic city, it might be beneficial for a second left party to try to generate some kind of competition for the Democrats. Whether this party would be left or right of the current Democratic party would not matter as much as the fact that there would be some competition. Now, before you all call be unrealistic, I DO NOT think this is probably going to happen. But if it did, I think you would see city politicians respond more favorably to the electorate. | ||
Dnvn522 Member Username: Dnvn522 Post Number: 160 Registered: 11-2004 |
So their solution to the vacant retail space is to build more retail space...but it's better because it's intertwined with residential and office space?? | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1832 Registered: 12-2003 |
Thank you for the kind words. I've spent the last week visiting the SF Bay area and didn't get on a computer much.
Technically, Detroit (like most municipalities) has non-partisan elections. I don't think the issue is that all Detroit politicians are Democrats. First, we have to realize that Detroit faces huge structural problems (created by state politics/policy, industrial economics, past city policy mistakes, and history) that will not go away regardless of who is mayor or on council. I don't care if Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, or Arnold is mayor; things can't get that much better that fast. There is however IMHO, vast room for improvement. I think there are primarily two problems. The first is that every elected office in the city is elected at large by the entire city. This means that every council member must appeal to the majority. Throughout recent history, the various city minorities (Gays, Latinos, Students, Artists, Working class Polish Americans) have been relatively left out of political discourse. The system is set up so that the only voice that gets to the table is the voice of the majority, which is black, poor or struggling, and with limited education. The result is that more Al Sharptons and Dennis Kuciniches are elected than Rudy Giulianis or Barak Obamas. The other problem is that the city's charter is specifically designed to create conflict and redundancy. This (along with the at-large instead of by-ward council) is designed to limit the opportunities for corruption and minority rule. For example: How many planning departments does the CoD have? There are 2. (There were 3 until sometime during the Archer administration.) One reports to City Council, and the other to the mayor. http://www.ci.detroit.mi.us/le gislative/BoardsCommissions/Ci tyPlanningCommission/planning_ main_frame.htm http://www.ci.detroit.mi.us/pl andevl/Default.htm It is normal to have a decision making body known as the Planning Commission (PC), usually appointed by City Council. Usually, the PC utilizes the input of city staff (The Planning Department). Detroit's PC (known as the CPC) has its own staff. Occasionally, the CPC's staff is working on something that the P&DD office is also working on. Coordination between the two bodies is difficult and apparently rare. (I believe this is changing somewhat, but I'm also under the impression that most change in this direction is coming from lower-level staff without any support from the department heads.) This is just one example, but in general, if you ask a Council Member what their job is, high on their list will be oversight of the executive branch (mayor). So what does Detroit do? I believe the must revise the city charter and by-laws to streamline the decision making processes and change the voting structure. I believe that Detroit should have a full-time, paid mayor that is the non-voting (or tie-breaking only) presiding officer on city council. There should be a small number of at-large council people that may or may not be paid/full time, and there should be a large number of part-time, no-pay, ward/district council members who are required to reside in their district. (Maybe these are the boundaries? - http://www.ci.detroit.mi.us/it sd/gis/GIS_mappg_crs_neighborh ood.htm) So while I agree that voters generally have no choice, I don't believe it is because of political parties. I believe that it is because all politicians must tailor their message to the whole-city majority. | ||
Focusonthed Member Username: Focusonthed Post Number: 716 Registered: 02-2006 |
I agree, the city should be divided up into wards. | ||
Dnvn522 Member Username: Dnvn522 Post Number: 166 Registered: 11-2004 |
jsmyers for mayor!!! | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1833 Registered: 12-2003 |
WRT Novi's retail market:
A lot of Novi's vacant retail space is poorly designed (Fountain Walk). A person affiliated with the Fountain Walk demolition stated in one of the public meetings that part of the purpose of the demolition is to signal to potential tenants that the new owner is committed and has the resources to make the center a success. The Main Street development is largely driven by housing. The retail is both an amenity to sell residential, and it is required by the zoning code to make the area mixed-use. The retail around main street doesn't (and probably won't) directly compete with the retail near Twelve Oaks and West Oaks shopping centers (across the freeway). All retail locations and retail renters are not interchangeable. A big shop isn't the same as a small shop, old isn't new, the RenCen isn't lower Woodward isn't Greektown. Shop keepers want specific locations and specific types of space. That is why new retail space in midtown (the Ellington and WSU stuff) is leasing out quickly, while space elsewhere in the city is vacant. | ||
Dnvn522 Member Username: Dnvn522 Post Number: 167 Registered: 11-2004 |
That makes sense...it just seemed ironic to me that one of their solutions for Main Street was a mixed use development that included more retail. | ||
Cman710 Member Username: Cman710 Post Number: 115 Registered: 07-2006 |
Hi Jsmyers: "The first is that every elected office in the city is elected at large by the entire city. This means that every council member must appeal to the majority. Throughout recent history, the various city minorities (Gays, Latinos, Students, Artists, Working class Polish Americans) have been relatively left out of political discourse." I completely agree. Not being from the Detroit region, my knowledge of city politics remains pretty limited, but as a former political science major from when I was in college, I am very interested. I think that having an at-large city council is awful, for the reasons that you stated. Having a council made up of members who come from single-member districts that are of roughly equal population would help greatly in ensuring minority participation in the political process. Right now, only one group really gets representation, because all the members must appeal to the majority. "The other problem is that the city's charter is specifically designed to create conflict and redundancy." So, is there any nominal difference in jurisdiction between the CPC and the P&DD? When I get a chance, I will check out both websites in detail, but it seems like there is probably a historical reason for the difference that may have originally pointed to different tasks. (For example, in the federal government, there are bodies within the executive branch that do similar things as other bodies within Congress, but they both answer to different bosses and are set up separately on purpose so as to maintain the independence of the two different branches of government.) A quick look at the two websites seems to indicate that the CPC answers to the City Council, while the P&DD administers federal grants. Besides that, I do not see any great division of labor, however. Whatever the case, I think we could all agree that one unified department would be more efficient. | ||
Jsmyers Member Username: Jsmyers Post Number: 1835 Registered: 12-2003 |
There is. I saw an article by Dr. June Thomas Manning (UP Prof from MSU) about the topic once. I can't remember a single specific at the moment though. I can remember that it goes by 30-40 years. I think you are correct about CPC and P&DD. But I believe both do forms of long range planning. I'm not sure who does development reviews of projects coming before the Planning Commission. I want to say that the Development half of P&DD usually acts as the advocate for the applicant while the CPC staff acts as the Planning Commission's eyes and ears. It seems to me that the city council should be able to make strategic and executive level hiring/firing decisions, and then trust all city staff to represent their interests. | ||
321brian Member Username: 321brian Post Number: 232 Registered: 02-2006 |
"It seems to me that the city council should be able to make strategic and executive level hiring/firing decisions, and then trust all city staff to represent their interests." Uh,.....ya....right. The Detroit City Council is know for that type of stuff. | ||
Danny Member Username: Danny Post Number: 5348 Registered: 02-2004 |
Mr. Boileau, I didn't know that sprawling Novi has a small ghettohood like the has been Fountain Walk and some of its vacant housing. | ||
Carolcb Member Username: Carolcb Post Number: 13 Registered: 11-2006 |
Just a note about the Quo Vadis in Westland - the interior was really something as well - gaudy, for sure, but lots of real mosaic. I don't know how you avoid what people consider improvement..... Happy New Year to all. |
