According to Bradley D. Baird of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, City Creek Center has been “a literal and figurative Godsend.” The project’s 1,800 construction jobs could not have come at a better time for the city, and the new residential towers being built along with the retail are making people think again about living downtown. Healthy cities, wherever they are in the world, boast attractive residential and retail offerings. It’s important to remember that people shop where they live, and competitive retail can’t survive, let along thrive, without people living close by.
Is it unusual for a major church to be in the retail development business (the “debate” referenced in the Times headline)? Not at all. European malls built in the 1800s were often anchored by churches. Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan is a perfect example. The 19th Century center still functions well today, positioned between the city’s most active commercial and residential districts and a major cathedral. The church fathers understood that they could benefit from foot traffic to and from their houses of worship, so they often developed their surrounding real estate into urban shopping centers, referred to as “gallerias” or “arcades.” I talk about this history in chapter four of Threshold Resistance.
There is no doubt that urban development is complex and challenging. But when the public and private sectors work together, like they’re doing in Salt Lake City, great things can happen. Back in the early 1980s, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. of Charleston, South Carolina, asked me to come down to his historic city to take a walk with him downtown. His beautiful city had certainly seen better days. Along King, Market and Meeting streets, Charleston’s main retail thoroughfares, boarded-up storefronts and broken glass in the streets drained the energy from the struggling merchants fighting for survival.
Mayor Riley knew he needed major new development to reclaim his city’s position as a regionally competitive shopping destination. But he feared that a mixed-use project proposed at the time, calling for a massive 12-story hotel tower, would do more harm than good. He was right, and I flew home with a renewed love and fascination for Charleston and all sorts of ideas on how to make Mayor Riley’s dream come true.
The result was Charleston Place, a luxury hotel, convention and shopping complex we designed, along with gifted architect John Carl Warneke, in the heart of this historic downtown. Like Salt Lake City’s new City Creek Center, Charleston Place complements and connects the city’s important commercial districts, enlivening pedestrian activity. We even figured a way to build a parking deck – - incorporating shops at street level – - adjacent to one of the oldest synagogues in North America, with the approval of the appropriately picky Charleston Preservation Society. The project’s 440-room convention hotel, managed today by Orient Express, was set back from the street, preserving the city’s elegant scale and streetscape.
Within months of the grand opening of Charleston Place in 1986, more than 80 buildings within blocks of the center had been refurbished and new shops were opening their doors to the rebounding customer traffic downtown. Today the shops built within Charleston Place feature 28 boutiques, including Gucci, St. John, Louis Vuitton and Tommy Bahama, all across the street from Saks Fifth Avenue, which opened its Charleston location in the wake of the project’s success.
And what about my good friend Joe Riley? In 2007 the wise people of Charleston elected him to his ninth term in office. And he is recognized around the world as a one of the planet’s great mayors and a champion of innovative urban planning and revitalization. Charleston Place would never have happened without Mayor Riley’s leadership and his belief in the power of public-private partnerships.
It’s great to see that same formula for success shaping the future of downtown Salt Lake City.
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