The city’s plans to sell 17 acres at its Scaleybark light rail station for transit-related development moved ahead a notch last week. On Wednesday a City Council committee voted 3-2 to recommend one of two proposals. (Yes: Nancy Carter, Andy Dulin and James Mitchell. No: John Lassiter and Don Lochman.)
The recommended (though just barely) proposal is from Scaleybark Partners – a coalition of Pappas Properties, GreenHawk Properties of Raleigh, Shook Kelley, ColeJenest & Stone and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership, among others. The other comes from a coalition of Bank of America, Harris Murr & Vermillion and Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh.
Financial analysis is ongoing. The headline seems to be: Scaleybark Partners project would cost more now but bring in more revenue later. But let’s talk about design for a minute, specifically retail, and learn a cautionary tale from the Bay Area.
Fruitvale Village is a transit village built on a former Bay Area Rapid Transit parking lot in Oakland, Calif., that “has become a reluctant symbol of the difficulties that transit-oriented development (TOD) can encounter,” says an article in the December issue of New Urban News, an industry newsletter. (To read it, click on “Past Articles.”)
Some cautions: Don’t assume the whole development’s a failure because it’s had problems filling its 40,000 square feet of retail space. The vacant stores are slowly being filled, and the development has been successful in many other ways. And it’s simplistic to single out one factor alone to blame for its retail problems.
BUT – you knew a “but” was coming – here’s what Charlotte should pay attention to. “BART more or less mandated that the main commuter parking garage be built where it would create a short and direct route between commuters’ cars and the station,” says the article. That means transit riders who arrived by car had no incentive to walk past the retail space.
The design from the Scaleybark Partners puts some retail space directly between the parking lot and the rail station. The Bank of American design doesn’t. I hope City Council members, scheduled to choose a developer Feb. 12, look closely at whether the design will make retail success a big uphill struggle.
Oh, and one more thing. The Unity Council, the nonprofit community development corporation that sponsored Fruitvale Village, made some dumb moves. Said Unity Council’s Jeff Pace: “We turned away Starbucks twice.”