Supermarkets and large chain stores in an urban context

The images below are of grocery stores and a sporting goods store on Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The Ralphs is in LA and the other three are in Santa Monica. Each of these buildings presents itself to the public realm differently. The three Santa Monica examples, Whole Foods, Bristol Farms, and Big 5, have varying degrees of transparency from the sidewalk. My assumption is that Santa Monica requires this. Bristol Farms has a few windows and provides a sign directing customers to the entrance behind the building. Big 5 Sporting Goods at least has an entrance on the street. The Whole Foods is the best example of how to do a large format chain store that emphasizes connection to the sidewalk. The primary entrance faces Wilshire and they've placed patio dining and their florist department at the sidewalk. Excellent job. Ad kudos to the planner and residents who likely fought for this.

The Ralph's grocery store in LA is an example of how not  to do it. No entrance on the street. Not even windows. Ok, there are windows. They've got them covered with images of food, but when those images were not there the windows looked into a nothing space with blank walls. The Ralphs and Bristol Farms stores say to the many customers on foot that they would prefer they arrive by car. They say, walking along the driveway and enter from the back. The Whole Foods example proves it can be done well. It's a shame these busineses don't take advantage of the dense population nearby. Many of whom walk, or would walk, to the store if it were more hospitable to people on foot.  (See the final image below from Google maps.)

 

 

 

 

 

Finding room for more housing in West LA

If this Nordstrom department store at Westside Pavilion mall closes in 2017 to be relocated to an expanded Westfield Century City as planned, the location would be ideal for a mixed-use residential/commercial development. The site is a 5-6 minute walk from the future Westwood Expo Line station that will open in 2016. That station is surrounded by single family homes and the Nordstrom site is an opportunity to place additional housing near the station without affecting single family properties. Additionally, the homes behind the mall have long ago acclimated to the mass of this building so a similarly sized mixed-use project could face less resistance than if this building were not already here; provided that adequate separation between the building and the single family neighborhood is maintained. This would also be consistent with the zone changes being proposed by the City of LA.

Nordstrom on the corner of Pico Boulevard and Westwood. A mixed-use project would also be an opportunity to open up this corner and eliminate the fortress like appearance of the mall.

An easy six minute walk from Nordstrom to Westwood station.

Decent Urban Form

You might not like the color. You might not like the architecture and you might not like the chain stores, but this is a pretty good project. 

This commercial development on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles has a Ross Dress for Less, CVS Pharmacy, and several chain restaurants. Nothing to get too excited about and no "game changing" tenants. The positives of the project are its height and the placement of the building at the sidewalk and the fact that all the stores have entrances that face the street. I can take or leave the architecture. I'm sure there's lots to criticize, but at least the facade is broken up a little and it doesn't look like one massive building (which it is). You can imagine how different this project would look were it built in a traditional suburban style behind a sea of asphalt parking.

 

The entrance to the parking is aligned with the cross street so although it's not a real street it is placed in a location that drivers and pedestrians would expect cars to be entering and exiting.  

This is the project looking east. There are awnings and patio dining. My biggest complaint is the lack of shade trees.

The newsstand has succumbed.

In a previous post I noted the longevity of this newsstand in Westwood Village, but it looks like it has closed. Because as cool as it is, do people still buy magazines and PHONE CARDS in large enough numbers to sustain such an enterprise? If the employment and residential density in the area were significant enough there might be enough people to support a newsstand, yet even with the nearby condo and office towers as well as UCLA a few blocks away it couldn't survive. 

Pop Up Parks

Or is it pocket park? Pop up pocket park? Tactical urbanism? Whatever you call it, installations like this one in downtown Los Angeles are intended to reclaim the street for public space with little financial investment. Some complain that the temporary nature of these interventions and do not create any lasting impact, but their benefit is that they encourage people to imagine the ways in which their neighborhoods could be different and how they can make better use of public space. That is a good thing. This installation temporarily removes some on street parking. It doesn't have to eliminate parking on the entire block and it doesn't eliminate cars entirely. It just puts cars in their place and reduces their dominance. Not sure how I feel about the stationary bikes though. Maybe a little too cute.

Does bad traffic make it safer for pedestrians?

People are still figuring out what these shark teeth mean even though the sign says this is where you yield to pedestrians.  There's an occasional sudden screeching stop when people realize there's a human being crossing the street, but the north bound traffic - this picture is taken facing north - tends to be respectful of pedestrians when they step into the crosswalk. My observation is that more than half of the cars coming south fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk in spite of the shark's teeth that are also on that side of the intersection. The city was recently taking tube counts at the intersection and I had hoped they would install a protected crosswalk. 

The times of day when there are many pedestrians at this intersection is also when traffic is the worst and the cars line up in a bumper to bumper parade. This is when it seems safest for pedestrians. It is when there is little traffic and few pedestrians when it's riskier to cross. What does this say about planning for pedestrian safety? Is there a way to create the level of pedestrian safety seen at the busiest times without artificially creating negative traffics impacts throughout the day? Given recent neighborhood opposition to bike lanes on this stretch of Westwood Boulevard I'm not sure what pedestrian improvements could get support.

Persian Square Possibilities

There is an intersection in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles that was designated "Persian Square" a few years ago. Immediately across the street is a 7-Eleven with a surface parking lot.  Wouldn't it be incredible if the very large Persian community got together to purchase that parcel and build a small park on it? A place for a statue, trees, and a water feature and some benches.  It could be a community asset rather than an eye sore. 

Accentuate the Positive

These signs are all within the same couple of blocks in the Westwood area of Los Angeles.  They are representative of the kinds of signs that dominate the urban landscape. I observed a similar situation during a visit to Target. From the moment I got out of my car until the moment I entered the store it was Don't do this. Don't do that. No you may not, etc. What if there were signs that said, "Enjoy the shade." "Take your time." "Sit on the bench as long as you like." "Stand here to enjoy our neighborhood." "Welcome." Would signs like that make any impact on how residents and visitors feel about the neighborhood? There are efforts to encourage walking using positive signs which can be seen here.

 

Grand Park

One of the newer great public spaces in Los Angeles is Downtown's Grand Park. These are some shots from the lunch hour when I was downtown recently for jury duty. A Farmers Market, yoga class, and just sitting and enjoying the weather. This space fills a need not just for the court employees and other government workers whose offices line the park. It has great potential. 25,000 people showed up for New Year's Eve this year (last year?).

How can we make this underpass better?

This is Westwood Boulevard where Interstate 10 passes over. How can we make this less of a dead zone and more of a community asset? I know there's a movement to remove freeways and replace them with boulevards, but that's not a practical reality for this freeway right now. So we're stuck with underpasses like this one. Just beyond this image is tree-lined Westwood and it is about a five minute walk from the under construction Metro Expo Line.  Murals and lighting have been tried in other places, but what else could be done to mitigate the inhospitable nature of this place? I'm wondering if vertical elements that mimic the trees further up could be part of the solution. They did something like that where the 10 passes over Pico Boulevard. They could provide additional lighting at night and also function to create a buffer between pedestrians and traffic. Bright paint could help as well. Or perhaps a decorative signs announcing the entry to the neighborhood. I wasn't able to find anything beyond artistic lighting and murals online. Have people just accepted that freeway underpasses are ugly and there's not much to be done? Maybe my Google search skills are lacking. 

If you want to encourage people to walk...

It really doesn't take much. Sometimes it's as simple as keeping the sidewalks level and planting some trees.

Does A Place Have To Be Tidy To Be Worth Caring About?

Or are places worth caring about better tended to because people care? The image below  is not the worst, but I'm using it as an example because it is in an area with many popular restaurants and other businesses. The waste running out of the dumpster and the overall unattractiveness of the street don't seem to be detrimental to businesses there.  I often wonder in these situations why the business owners don't take it upon themselves to keep things clean. I have similar questions about the sidewalks along Westwood Boulevard between Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire in Los Angeles. They seem to lack any attention to basic cleanliness and the trees have been trimmed down to shrubs, yet there are only  a handful of vacancies and there's plenty of foot traffic. I'm trying to figure out what I;'m missing. Could be as simple as the fact that the demand for the space and the overall economic vitality override the need for order and cleanliness. I suppose urbanism isn't necessarily tidy. In fact some would say it NEEDS to be a little messy.

Boulevard as wide as a freeway.

This is the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard.  This is what I have to cross to get to the closest grocery store. Ten lanes of traffic. Essentially a freeway with a traffic signal. (The route of the cancelled Beverly Hills Freeway. )

Many pedestrians cross this street with minimal problems every day. It's not the most pleasant experience because you feel very exposed in the middle of the vast intersection.  But there's strength in numbers so if you happen to be crossing one of the times of day when there are large numbers of people it really changes the experience.  There's no easy way to mitigate the massiveness of this boulevard, but on each of the corners there are gas stations,  a car wash, and a one story commercial building. Taller structures built to the corner might be the best way to reduce the feeling of exposure this intersection creates.  I can guess how the Homeowners' Owners Associations would respond to that. 

Continuity of Place

This is a building on Main and Fifth in downtown Los Angeles. According to Brigham Yen the building is known as the Pershing Hotel and was built in 1889. The structure is being converted into affordable housing for the homeless and very low income population. The image above shows the structure with a construction fence around it before demolition of the guts if the building. The three images below show the facade braced while the new building is constructed behind it. While this method of facade preservation doesn't provide all the benefits of preserving the entire building, such as keeping the demolition of debris out of landfills, it helps maintain continuity of place in the historic core of downtown Los Angeles.

 

 

Related:  Older buildings, continuity of place, and the human experience.

  

What is wrong with Reseda?

UPDATE: After giving it some thought I've decided that the large parking lots behind the buildings along Sherman Way need to be redeveloped with housing. Parking for the commercial uses can be integrated into the new development. For sale or rental housing. A first apartment for a local kid, a place for a downsizing senior who wants to be able to walk places rather than drive, a condo for a young family just starting out.

Reseda is a neighborhood of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. The population is about 75,000 which is approximately 11,500 people per square mile. The commercial center of the neighborhood is the intersection of Reseda Boulevard and Sherman Way. The area seems to have so much of what urbanists insist are essential to a vital, thriving, livable community. Yet Reseda doesn't seem to be performing as might be expected from a place with so many physical assets. The local councilman recently remarked that it had the area had the potential to be the "next hot night spot." I'm not sure what that means. Maybe just that it could have a more vibrant dining scene? I recently took some pictures of some of the physical assets in the area, which are below.

 

 Stores built to the sidewalk, street trees, on street parking, metered parking.

  

Buildings at the corner and opening to the corner, two story with office on the second floor, cross walks clearly marked.

 

 Streets are not excessively wide, crosswalks clearly marked, landscaped center median, retail windows open to the street.

 

On street parking, landscaped center median.

Charming "pedestrian level" lighting at bus stops. 

 

 

 Two examples of the more than adequate supply of free parking that was empty or nearly empty on  Sunday afternoon.  

That was the good. And now the bad.

                                                     

Vacant store front on Sherman Way 

 

Two separate churches in what should be revenue generating commercial spaces.

 

 

Vacant movie theater. (Doesn't every failing downtown have an empty old movie theater?) 

 

This didn't help matters. A Walgreen's set back form the street with a parking lot fronting the street. Exactly the opposite of what they should be building here.  They could have very easily brought that store to the corner and put the parking behind it.

Why, in spite of so many great assets, is this district do down and out? I did a Google search for "downtown Reseda plan" and the first hit was an LA Times article from 1990 "Revised Plan for Downtown Reseda Draws Mixed Reviews." Basically, the business owners and residents opposed mixed-use development, insisted on a two story height limit, and wanted to ensure that auto oriented uses such as repair and upholstery could open and expand in the area. It just seems like an odd place to want to concentrate those uses. But having read some of the comments in that article, I'm not surprised that downtown Reseda is in the state it's in. I'd love to learn more about this area and understand why it's struggling so badly.

Related: Review: A New Streetscape for Burlingame Avenue

People Worth Caring About

This is a picture of one of many homeless encampments in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. This man was living here until recently, but the City (or whomever maintains the bus benches) removed the bench and I believe he's joined up with a woman who also lives on the sidewalk a few blocks down. It's incredible. They have toiletries, pots and pans, clothes, etc.  The majority of homeless people that I observe in my neighborhood seem to be mentally ill or addicted to drugs or alcohol.  For those people who can get clean or are homeless for other reasons there are often support services and transitional housing. The VA hospital is also nearby so vets who struggle with mental illness or addiction tend to congregate where services are provided for them. I'm hard pressed to agree that this is an urban design issue. We need to make room for services in our land use plans, but beyond that do planners play a role in the solution? This problem affects the livability of our cities, but we can't urban design our way around mental illness and addiction. Ignoring this problem undermines social order and detracts from the efforts to make our cities more livable.

 

Are we being humane by allowing mentally ill people to wander the streets dirty, hungry, and confused? Is it more humane to decide as a society that we need to take charge of the lives of the mentally ill and compel them to get help and even institutionalize them. There are civil liberty issues of course, but at what point does a mentally ill person pose enough of a threat that the state should step in to protect them and the public? Orange County, California recently voted to make use of a relatively new state law that allows for court-ordered treatment of mentally ill. This is forced treatment for the mentally I'll and is as much about protecting them as the rest of us. It's a good start in at least one part of SoCal. 

"Clashing Expectations of Los Angeles Living"

An LA Times piece related to something I posted previously: "Another one bites the dust".

Neighbors pushing for stricter rules fear that outsized, out-of-character buildings will drag down their home values. Edri and others maintain that bigger homes boost prices for their neighbors.

The tensions also reflect clashing expectations of Los Angeles living.

For decades there was "kind of a consensus about what a Southern California house should look like" — low, rambling and open to the landscape, cultural historian D.J. Waldie said. That philosophy, along with requirements imposed by builders, gave rise to uniform neighborhoods lined with homes of similar sizes and styles, Waldie said.

But in a growing city with scant undeveloped land and changing tastes, some Angelenos see things differently. They look at older neighborhoods and think, "'this is where the good life is lived,'" Waldie said. "'But I don't want to live in a 1,300-square-foot house.'"

 

 

 

A Beautiful Old Post Office in Hollywood

This is the Hollywood Station of the US Post Office. Built when we had the wherewithal to build things of lasting value and places worth caring about. This is the sort of building people recognize as beautiful and meaningful in their neighborhood. Why can't we build these things today? If this were built today it would likely be set back far from the street with a parking lot in front of it and probably enough room to drive up and drop your mail because heaven forbid you have to get out of your car for five minutes.

This is a picture of the iron work over the windows.  

Another one bites the dust.

The house being demolished is a  2 bedroom,  1 bathroom home that sold late last year for $975,000.  It is not uncommon for this to happen.  Sometimes the houses that replace them are very modern like this one.   And sometimes they are oddly designed hodge-podge of styles and really only intended to max out the buildable area like this one. 

 

The blue house next door is indicative of the original character of the neighborhood. Does neighborhood character matter? Should new construction be required to match existing styles and building massing or should people be allowed to build as they choose within the limitations of the zoning?

Related

Sidewalk Dining

It's important that sidewalks are wide enough to allow for sidewalk dining and trees without unnecessarily impeding pedestrian movement.  This sidewalk in Larchmont Village is a great space.

 

Related.