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The Natick Sprawl
By adamg on Sat, 03/05/2005 - 11:37am
Sharon complains about plans for the new mega-uber-giganto Natick Mall complex:
Here in the "Golden Triangle" west of Boston, the proposed Natick Mall expansion is planned as a more-of-the-same-old enclosed shopping mall experience, sited in a particularly pedestrian unappealing way surrounded, of course, by a vast sea of asphalt. Even existing retailers in the space are complaining that the plan to build a separate addition is pedestrian-hostile, offering a potentially dangerous and certainly off-putting way of getting from the new to old shopping areas.
Elsewhere in America, though, the big trend is away from enclosed malls in favor of so-called "lifestyle centers" – an open-air shopping experience that tries to create a town-square-like "sense of place" and ambiance that encourages strolling and lingering. ...
Hmm, you mean just like, oh, Shoppers World in Framingham, circa 1980? Before they turned it into a giant parking lot surrounded by big ugly concrete boxes with those stupid green faux canopy things that look more like guard towers at a maximum-security prison (whose motto should be "Shop or Die!")?
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Comments
Are the plans online?
Is there a map or diagram of the proposal, so we can see what you and the merchants are complaining about?
Shopper's World
I can't believe anyone's nostalgic about that dump.
Well ...
The Jordan Marsh dome was pretty cool.
Not nostalgic for the dump part
But the idea of the mall is now being treated in the rest of the country as a savior from mallsprawl - a sort of "town center." Yeah, the old Shoppers World got really ratty toward the end, but is its replacement really any better?
It's the sign of the times, I guess.
Unfortunately, to make matters worse, the cineplexes have been chopped up into anywhere from 13-20 smaller cinema screens, which is kind of unfortunate. Let's see what happens. Malls aren't what they used to be. Oh, well--I rarely ever went to malls anyhow when I was growing up. The only thing about the old days that I miss really, are a lot of the movies and the music of that time.
The town-center idea of shopp
The town-center idea of shopping mall isn't something new; it's much more of a re-hashing of the original mall concept (see Quincy Market) that didn't usually work out.
An example ...
... of a new-style "town center" mall is Easton, in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
Yes, it's pretty, and pleasant to walk around. But it's also fake, it's disconnected from anything around it (having been built in what was basically a cornfield before), and it seriously damaged Downtown Columbus's business district. In fact, it's probably a big reason that Columbus's downtown Lazarus department store, an institution there since 1851 (!), closed last year.
A better example
This looks like a much better example of how to do it, although I haven't had the chance to visit it.
Of course, it helps a lot that Los Angeles was already an intensely urban place, unlike Framingham or Natick or the Easton area of Columbus.
You need to visit downtown Framingham
It's pretty intensely urban, although nowhere near as much as before the malls went in.