It’s time to eliminate the downtown mall
April 11th, 2008 at 01:46pm Wally Haas
If pictures are worth 1,000 words, then the case for removing the downtown mall — now — is made by photo in the previous post and in one that appears with this editorial.
The latter dates to 1929. It was shot from the approximate vantage point of the Memorial Hall parking lot, looking south. It shows the busy intersection of North Main and Mulberry streets. Notice the room for two lanes of traffic in either direction, plus curb parking, plus sidewalks. Looks like a busy commercial area to us. The pedestrians are blurry, but they’re there.
The picture in the previous post was taken last week. It shows a woman who works in Trekk Cross Media, the corner building on the right in the old photograph.
But where are the people on the “pedestrian mall?” Besides the subject of the photo, there is a lone pedestrian in the background on the left.
Oh, and look at the lamp post above the subject’s shoulder. Attached to the post is a “No Loitering” sign, complete with ordinance citation. The ordinance gives police the power to move along and make temporarily disappear a group of people who feel exceedingly comfortable on our mall — vagrants.
The recent picture is not what the heart of a downtown should look like. Good business environments are not peaceful, pedestrian-poor places accessible only on foot. They are bustling places where people can drive their cars, park, eat, shop, walk around, congregate, play.
No matter how many times city officials hear that message from the more vocal downtown businesspeople, they seem incapable of making a decision and moving ahead with taking out the mall. It’s past due.
While officials are planning how to take out the mall, they also should resolve to open up downtown’s one-way streets to traffic in both directions. The downtown traffic patterns right now are ridiculously confusing and incomprehensible to out-of-town visitors who want to get from I-90 or Bypass 20 to the Coronado Performing Arts Center or one of the museums.
Opening up Main Street to vehicles is the centerpiece of redoing downtown traffic flow.
If we had a nickel for every story that’s been written about the mall debate and every meeting that’s been held on the subject, we’d have enough money to buy a dandy trinket from J.R. Kortman Center for Design, a unique gift store on the mall. Owners Jerry Kortman and Doc Slafkosky have hung on in the same location for more than 20 years. They believe downtown businesses would benefit if the mall were removed and traffic could go by the storefronts on North Main Street.
ikewise, Tom Giamalva, owner of Palace Shoe Service, 204 N. Main St., has long advocated tearing out the mall and letting traffic through.
Of course, there is disagreement on the issue. Some believe the mall is worthwhile as a public gathering space. Some people like the trees; the debate has dragged on for so many years, the trees have reached maturity. And certainly, street and sidewalk construction after removing the mall would disrupt business for a while.
The long-term benefit is worth the inconvenience.
There was debate almost from the time the mall was created in 1974. Originally, West State Street was closed off, too, and traffic was rerouted around the heart of downtown. Symbol, the big orange Alexander Liberman sculpture in Sinnissippi Park, originally was set down at the intersection of West State and Main streets.
Of course, it quickly became apparent that Symbol was suffocated in that space and that it had been a mistake to put an obstruction on West State Street that required a permanent traffic detour.
Symbol was moved and West State Street was reopened in 1984. Squabbling over whether to leave or take out the rest of the mall started sometime about then.
The picture taken last week is Exhibit A that the pedestrian mall has not worked out. At long last, correct the mistake. Get rid of it.
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7 Comments Add your own
1. trebor | April 11th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I would take a different view and that is to leave the mall and build up the “things to do”. I wonder if traffic flowing through downtown is going to generate more business for Kortmans and the Palace. As far as access to the Coronado or the Metrocenter, most of the events are at night and the parking is awful.
I have lived and traveled extensively throughout Europe. One of the great experiences that my hosts would give to me would be to enjoy a lunch, dinner or drink on their towns’ “piazza”, “mall” or “rynek” where you would enjoy the shops, restaurants, street entertainment and the overall ambiance. We are developing more business and cultural ties with Sweden, Italy, China and a closer relationship to Olympic-candidate Chicago, why not make us more international?
Rockford has this opportunity by keeping the mall and making it part of the eventual Riverwalk and Museum Campus experience.
I often wonder why downtown still has a number of empty storefronts. Is it because of lack of “traffic flow” or is it because simply, people merely work downtown and go home to their outlying homes and enjoy local eateries and shopping in their neighborhoods. Your 1929 photo was during times that have significantly chenged sine then: there were no “suburbs”, no shopping centers, no strip malls. Probably more people lived in downtowns back then also. Urban sprawl has been going on strong since the 1950’s.
The Mall photo with the single person is misleading. Many times, especially when the weather is warm, I can walk through the mall and see numerous people enjoying their lunch, coffee or simply getting some fresh air. Granted, those are during work hours, but as I said before, 5 p.m. comes and the downtown closes.
I’d favor not spending the money to remove the mall but keep the focus on getting development on the big empty buildings, get more people to live downtown and create more restaurants, shops and fun stuff to do.
Removing the mall would leave me with a cold feeling of downtown instead of the possibility of becoming a true cultural destination linked with the museums, arts and yes, the Metrocenter and Coronado.
Food for further thought, perhaps?
2. Matthew | April 11th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I agree. Take it down, and start cleaning the downtown up. Why leave a virtually decrepit building when it could be turned into a new property venture by a real estate developer.
This isn’t the source of the problem, though. A despairing socioeconomic cloud is lurking over the the whole of the city. Removing the mall is a fine first step, but cleaning up Rockford is a much, much larger task. And we need a more effecitve, and far better trained police department to do that job. Crime seems to have become unstoppably rampant through this city. And, my last statement was made to me by a Rockford Police Officer.
There has to be an ongoing commitment, or else, we’ll just tear a building down, but keep the area in a questionable state of desirability for business ventures to develop. People won’t come, if they’re afraid.
3. hokumboy | April 11th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I was lucky enough to visit Sweden and Denmark several years ago and was more than impressed by the pedestrian shopping areas and squares in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Malmo, and Rockford’s sister city, Borgholm.
The trick isn’t to tear down the mall, but rather to put something there that will make people want to shop downtown. If you tear down the mall and replace it with city streets you’ll just replace an empty mall with empty streets. Instead of giving huge tax incentives to rock star businesses on the far edge of town give a few incentives to business to locate in the downtown area.
4. Nancy Froe | April 12th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
In response to comments by “trebor.” Yes, I would agree that this is not 1929, but by the same token, this is not Europe, either. The piazzas, plazas, and ryneks were part of the culturally indigenous design of these cities hundreds of years ago. Also, a vast majority of Europeans use trams, subways, and buses to get around and are not as nearly reliant on cars as we are. Rockford grew up in the automobile age where cars play a key role in the development of our cities. Main Street was designed and built to be just that…our main street or thoroughfare, running border to border north and south all the way through the city. It was never intended to be a plaza or mall.
Placing the mall on Main Street was a mistake form the moment it opened, disrupting the “natural” urban grid, cutting off the seemless flow of traffic through downtown and the city. In reference to Europe, it would be like closing off two blocks of rue de Rivoli right in the middle of Paris! Whether we like it or not, business relies on traffic to survive and flourish. Unfortunately, several dozen people eating sack lunches a few months out of a year are not enough to encourage development. The proof is in the pudding. How many years of empty buildings and storefronts do we need to illustrate that point?
I agree that we need to develop these buildings and storefronts…but how do you attract businesses to a street where your traffic numbers are are next to nothing? I wish things were different here, but traffic numbers are the most important thing a prospective developer, or retailer and their banks look at. Not my opinion, just a fact of life in America.
More than three hundred downtown malls were constructed in America during the sixties and seventies. Less than twenty remain. Why? Because they were inappropriate and incongruous to their surroundings. We found that out here, but have been slow to react . Only the State Street portion was removed. Notice all the development on State Street where there is an average of ten thousand cars a day that drive through that part of downtown.
It seems it would be much easier to open up Main Street and get this part of downtown moving again, than to try to change Americans to live, think, and act like Europeans.
5. Midwest Gal | April 12th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
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What stores would you like to see? I can’t think of any stores that would lure me downtown.
6. hokumboy | April 13th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Check out State Street in Madison. Pack up about 3 blocks worth of the clothing, music, book and specialty stores and bring them down to Rockford. Why is it I have to drive 90 miles to visit a decent CD store? Why can’t a real book store make it in this town, instead of the cookie cutter chains we have now. How many times a year would one want to shop at Kortman’s? A nice place, to be sure, but one pearl doesn’t make an oyster bed.
Have a farmer’s market in the mall on Saturdays. A real farmer’s market, not just a few vendors (again, check out Madison, or even Eau Claire) all having basically the same wares.
Find some damn “non-permit” parking in our downtown area. Of course no one comes downtown to shop. All the parking is held by permit holders. Or, at the parking garage, the police dept. has hogged most of the stalls.
Tearing down the mall won’t bring any more people to the existing downtown businesses, it will just make it easier to drive past them.
7. redrover | April 15th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
So let me get this straight:
Because very few people were seen in the Downtown Mall when the famous picture was taken, then it stands to reason that the Mall’s reason for being no longer exists and therefore should be removed, at a great expense, by spending funds that could be (better?) used to repair existing roads.
For what it costs to remove the Mall, what benefit would be derived, apart from restoring the street grid to those who happen to drive downtown?
From what I understand, road repair and improvement funds are allocated according to road usage. Have there been any studies at all of the traffic that would be using this newly opened Main Street area? How does that projected usage compare with other well-used streets in desperate need of repairs or widening (like North Alpine Road, for instance)?
In other words, how many cars will be using the newly reconstructed Main Street once the Mall is removed, and does that usage justify the expenditure of removing the mall?
Downtown is dead not because there is a Mall through it but because that corrupt, elected city and county politicians, in return for legalized bribes called campaign contributions, allowed wealthy and powerful developers to turn fertile farmland into urban commercial sprawl despite the commercial blight left behind in formerly vibrant commercial centers like downtown Rockford, North Towne, Rockford Plaza, and Machesney Park Mall, among others. Removing the Mall will not change anything about this.
As near as I can see, the only entity that really stands to benefit from the Mall removal proposal is Rockford Blacktop, who I suspect is behind this campaign. What’s the point of building a whole new asphalt plant in a residential area if there are no new streets to build?
Commentator “trebor” has it exactly right. Unless and until the city and the RRS can present hard data to support their contention that removing the Mall would produce some sort of “long-term benefit”, it should stay right where it is.
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