A transit friendly development...

Image via Wikipedia Previously, I have discussed how we can take currently auto centric areas that are not working such as 4500 South and State Street and turn them into a more pedestrian and transit friendly area. Not only would this make the area more pleasing but it would also help boost bus ridership giving people the opportunity to live near the transit lines.

Now, I want to take a little closer look at this proposal using this same area. There is already construction on TOD near the Murray North TRAX station so lets walk across the street and see what we can do.

Since the new Deseret Industries building has already been built and is pretty auto centric, we will look at the couple of blocks north of 4500 South.

First of all you would need to rebuild a few blocks of Main Street that are not very pedestrian friendly. With the construction of the new developments by the TRAX station, this will increase the need for a more pedestrian friendly environment.

Then you will need to design the housing. If you look at the successful old cities compared to what we have now with suburban cookie cutter developments, you will notice that there is a range of prices. This has worked well in Daybreak were there is everything from Condos all the way up to expensive homes all located in the same area. In other words there is no economic segregation that creates walls between people.

I have also discussed the need to have affordable units so that people who need transit can access it easily. As part of having affordable housing is the need for work/live units. While these are going to be part of the Cottonwood Mall development, these of course will out of the price range we are talking about. As I have mentioned many times when new developments are built smaller locally owned businesses are usually the first to get the boot. By building affordable work/live units, this will give people new opportunities to have their own businesses and control their own destinies.

Finally you also need to have retail shops such as markets so that people living in the complex can walk to shopping. Like the housing, these should have affordable units so that locally owned businesses can afford them and develop their own businesses.

Once again there is many spots were this type of development could work such as along Redwood Road all the way from Interstate 80 to SLCC, the area around 900 East/4500 South, and many others.

More on the Cottonwood Mall Area Development...

Image via WikipediaWhen the announcement came that the Cottonwood Mall would be torn down and replaced by a new development, I was skeptical of how the development would be developed. It look as though General Growth properties basically let the mall die so they could turn around and redevelop and get tax dollars for the development (along with the tax savings they get by building a new development over a remodel).

Well I have kept an open mind that they would do something different, to set it apart from Gateway and blend the development into the rest of the community. We have seen way too many developments like Gateway that are designed to keep people within the complex and do not blend into the rest of the neighborhoods.

Today, I was asked to fill out a survey about what features I would look for if I were to purchase a home in the complex. First of all, in this age of high priced gas, there was no question in the survey about how important transit connections were so I included comments about that in the survey.

While it is too early to see how the development will blend into the community, it looks as though it will be another Gateway were it is easy to move around the development but you will be discouraged from leaving the area. The creek looks like it is designed to be a barrier to people heading to Highland drive. The sidewalks to cross the the creek are very narrow as to discourage people to walk across them.

While General Growth also said that it would like to invite locally owned stores to locate in the center, they made it clear that it would have to be an additional location for a successful high end location.

I do not expect the city of Holladay to do much to insure that the complex is blended into the community since they have show little in the way of good planning sense so far. Clearly this complex is designed for the Lexus and Mercedes crowd and not the UTA riding crowd even if those riders have given up their Lexus to take the bus.

New developments such as the one at the Cottonwood Mall need to be encouraged to blend better into the neighborhood, encourage transit access, and also consider some affordable units to give a better mix of housing options. While some developers see making the complex blend into the community as a bad thing because that encourages people to leave and go to other neighborhood stores, in the long run it will bring more people to the area because it will actually encourage more shoppers to the area because there is a wider range of shopping options.