Is it too late to build an urban village(s) in the core?

Mixed use building on 1st Avenue SW in Kingston Village

SOURCE: David Sucher, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village (Seattle: City Comforts Inc., revised edition, 2016)

It is one thing to note the unbalanced, car-dependent way in which Cedar Rapids's showpiece New Bohemia neighborhood--and to some extent, other post-flood areas like Downtown, Czech Village and Kingston--are developing. It is quite a different matter to suggest steps that ought to be taken to remedy matters. It is likely, for one thing, that the present situation has resulted from rational (if short-term-focused) assessment of what is achievable. We have the residential and commercial mix we have because those projects seemed most likely to succeed.

Development surely is constrained by external factors beyond the control of anyone in the core: increasing economic inequality, siting practices of grocery chains, local transportation that particularly favors private motor vehicles, and physical isolation of the core from older residential neighborhoods, to name a few. To name another, the hyper-convenience of the Internet is changing shopping and work habits.

ped crossing island and bike lane, 3rd Avenue and 2nd Street SW in Kingston

I am not in business, and never have been, nor do I have professional training as a city planner. "I know what I like," to borrow a timeworn cliche, but so do a lot of other people, so this needs to be about more than my personal taste and preferences.

A good starting point for a conversation with stakeholders would be to know why they are in the core instead of some other place. I imagine they've specifically chosen to be there, but the owner of the (Downtown) CR Chophouse restaurant blamed its recent closure on the presence of homeless people and the lack of convenient parking (El Hajj 2024). If these truly were problematic, why on earth was the restaurant located where it was? This metropolitan area is replete with commercial opportunities with fields of parking and no homeless for miles. 

3rd Avenue SW: The core has bike infrastructure and bus options,
not great but often serviceable 

Right now the core is heavy on apartments and bars, and light on pretty much everything else (except hair salons--why are there so many hair salons?). It is now the case, and likely to continue to be so for some time, that the economy of the core is heavily dependent on people from elsewhere in the region driving there to shop or dine or drink.

Waste of prime space: Surface parking, Kingston Village

You can be, I would think, the new hot spot only for so long. When I first arrived in Cedar Rapids, the area hot spots were the Amana Colonies and maybe the malls. Today those serve as object lessons: hot spots show their age pretty quickly. If the opening of the admittedly fantastic Big Grove location on 1st Street West has been a body blow to the other bars in the core, wait til you see what happens when the casino opens! Marion has invested a lot of money in restarting its downtown area, but counting on the government may not be your most reliable or timely option. Political decisions are unpredictable, and government finances are ever-shakier.

It seems the best long-term strategy for core areas is to become self-sustaining. That is, if the residential population in the center of Cedar Rapids can become large and stable and diverse enough, there will be a steady source of demand for goods and services throughout the day and week, as well as a steady source of people on the street to provide liveliness and atmosphere attractive to visitors. This will require a different mix of housing and businesses than can currently be found anywhere in or adjacent to the core. Some of this will happen of its own accord once the ball starts rolling, but it may need some advocacy to get started.

David Sucher called his development handbook City Comforts because:

Human comfort is the measure of a city.... The main task [of city building] is making people comfortable, the same task faced by the host at a party. (2016: 20)

The means to this end is mixed-use development, in order to facilitate "mixing" of people, or as he titles an early chapter, "Bumping Into People."

The purpose of mixing uses, allowing different activities to rub cheek by jowl, is to foster more complex and intertwined human relations and thus more interesting places. The purpose is to help create human connections--not to mix activities per se. There is nothing magic about mixing uses. (2016: 32)

wall, 1st Street SW

What an urban village can offer people, that car-dependent shopping corridors like Edgewood or Collins Roads cannot, is accessible, comfortable liveliness. That can be self-sustaining only if there are connections to a steady stream of people at different times of the day, rooted in local residents doing the stuff of daily life. (See Jacobs (1961) 2011: 65-71.)

In subsequent chapters, Sucher provides detailed recommendations, with plentiful illustrations, about transportation, sense of place, safety, child-friendliness, necessities, compatible building, and entry points. Some of this we can see in the core: most building is done up to the sidewalk, most building fronts are active rather than blank walls. (See his chapter 3.) My own sense is we could do more to welcome children, encourage transportation alternatives, and provide necessities like rest rooms, as well as to make new buildings compatible with the neighborhood's physical history, but maybe conversations will reveal other opportunities.

Ellen Shepherd of Community Allies speaks
at Loyola University, 2016

There are a number of organizations that can support local grass-roots place making efforts. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ilsr.org) provides research and advocacy on behalf of locally-owned businesses; co-director Stacy Mitchell's 2017 post, "8 Policy Strategies Cities Can Use to Support Local Businesses," is a good starting point and conversation-starter. Community Allies (communityallies.net), based in Chicago, provides speakers and training towards building local economies. The Center for Neighborhood Technology (cnt.org) focuses on Chicago, but provides experience on which others can draw. 

There are a lot of forces, and a lot of sunk costs, pushing the core to be a quaint, beer-soaked version of car-dependent suburbia. That doesn't mean we can't push back, and there are reasons to believe the long-term viability of the core depends on pushing back.

SEE ALSO: 

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities [Modern Library, (1961) 2011], esp. chs 13 ("The Self-Destruction of Diversity") and 14 ("The Curse of Border Vacuums")

Alexander Garvin, The Heart of the City: Creating Downtowns for a New Century (Island, 2019). His "six lessons for any downtown" (ch. 6) include:

1. Establish a distinctive downtown image that is instantly recognizable and admirable

2. Improve access into and circulation within downtown

3. Enlarge and enhance the public realm esp. reconfiguring space used by pedestrians, moving vehicles, and parking

4. Sustain a habitable environment downtown (trees, parkland)

5. Reduce cost of doing business for both governments and private actors

6. Flexible land use, building use and new construction

Envisioning CR I: A 24-Hour Downtown?

"I'm gonna wake up in a city that never sleeps," sings Frank Sinatra (above) in his 1980 hit "New York, New York" (lyrics by Fred Ebb). That is one version of a 24-hour downtown--where the bars never close and the show never stops--but not the only one. No amount of planning is going to turn Cedar Rapids into Manhattan, and any effort to do so would be costly, ridiculous and futile.

Cedar Rapids can and should have a 24-hour downtown, though, if it means a place where people work, play and live. A surge of investment since the 2008 flood has brought an increase in occupied office space, restaurant and entertainment options, and condominium development from the pre-2008 era. (No numbers, sorry, just assumptions... but I'd be eternally grateful to anyone who has solid numbers.) Exciting parallel development is occurring about a mile to the south, in the New Bohemia district.

Prior to 2008 a fair number of people came downtown in the morning to work, and left in the late afternoon. And most days that would be it, until the next morning. Some nights there might be a show at the Five Seasons Center, Paramount Theater or TCR, which would bring a different crowd of people downtown for a few hours. The public library, not to be overlooked, was open til 9. But for much of the week, there wasn't a lot happening downtown. Which meant there wasn't a lot of reason to go downtown, most of the time, and that can lead to a vicious cycle of decreasing activity.

With enough people living downtown as well as working and attending events, there are always people out doing something. That adds to the energy of the area, which makes it an attractive place for people to go, and it adds to economic opportunities for businesses catering to all the people who are there at one time of day or another. Downtown Cedar Rapids has room to expand, too, with under-utilized space in the MedQuarter district to the east and the Taylor Area to the west (not to mention between downtown and New Bo), as well as planned development in Kingston Village across the river.

Given that one of the common criticisms of Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel, as he struggles towards re-election this year, is that he's put resources into downtown and neglected neighborhoods, it's a fair question to ask why I'm focusing on downtown Cedar Rapids. Theoretically, an energized clustering of people could occur any place in town, right? (Or even in a "new town," like one of those New Urbanist developments.) I think there are three reasons everyone should care about downtown that apply to all municipalities:

1. A city's downtown is the civic space shared by all metropolitan residents, assuming there exists such a space in the region at all.
2. Downtown is where sustainable, walkable urbanism is most likely to occur of any place in the metropolitan area, because most of the infrastructure is already there
3. Economic success in such a compact area is more sustainable through the dips and sways of the economic cycle.

In Cedar Rapids, specifically, there's a fourth reason: the devastation of 2008 left a lot of room for infill development. I'm not saying we should rebuild with the naïve assumption that it will never flood again, but surely future flood dangers can be accommodated in building design.

EnvisionCR, the master plan the city adopted last month, doesn't have much to say specifically about downtown. But there are encouraging signs in other plans that have been developed for districts adjacent to downtown, such as Kingston Village and MedQuarter. While the content of the MedQuarter plan is more focused on out-of-town visitors than potential residents, which could lead to a real missed opportunity, the promising Kingston Village plan includes single family housing towards the south end, near 8th Avenue (see map, pp. 19-20). The plan states (p. 22):

The broad land-use designation identified for Kingston Village as a part of this study is that of a mixed-use neighborhood, where the key venues of daily life – places to live, shop, work, play and learn – are within easy reach of one another. A successful mixed-use neighborhood will provide choices for its residents and an aesthetic and energy that will draw visitors. It will accommodate mixed-incomes and purposefully include a variety of appropriate uses within walkable distances and consider the necessary density required to foster lively streets.

Yes! That's got it! This is a gospel I'd like to see spread around to the other edges of downtown.

Two things remain somewhat unclear for downtown's future direction. It isn't clear what the city can do to encourage a more well-rounded downtown, or how highly that rates on the list of priorities. Currently downtown is heavy on upscale restaurants and condominiums. A well-rounded downtown would have a variety of jobs, attractions and housing for people of various ages, income levels and family situations. To that end, the downtown area could use some basic stores (grocery, hardware, e.g.), and for families, a school and a park with a playground. Greene Square Park is ideally located between the public library and the art museum, but the renovation proposal seems better oriented for a showpiece ("Look at the size of that gol dang art installation!") than for a place for children to play.

Secondly, can the city find developers willing to buy into the vision? A city's plans are at the mercy of the market forces of supply (by house developers and builders) and demand (by homebuyers), and for suppliers profit margins remain highest for large lot subdivisions on the edge of town. I'm sure there are developers salivating at the positive externalities they presume will come from the construction of the Highway 100 extension. Cities that want to promote sustainable, walkable urbanity often need to reach out to specific developers who share that inclination. (California blogger Dave Alden notes cities can adjust builders' impact fees so they're higher on the suburban fringe and lower in the urban core. I didn't even know "impact fees" existed, so good on you, Dave.) So far, though, so good: Besides a number of condominium projects underway downtown and in Kingston Village, there are some single family dwellings--row houses? well, all right--under construction on 2nd St SW.

Once occupied, these new houses will add to the vitality of downtown...

...and land is being sold for more here...

...so, why not here?

Another possibility for long-term residence is the land that has been cleared for the (as yet unapproved by the State of Iowa) casino. The all-in-one pod that had been proposed would not have been at all integrated into its surroundings; some houses and small shops would be better, I think. Here I'm very much with Alex Ihnen, who argues on the NextStL blog that multi-million dollar big projects will do less for St. Louis than organic development.

And we could save this older house, which the city for some reason intends to tear down if they can't find someone to move it.

(Next: Including the poor.)

ARTICLES CITED IN THIS POST

Dave Alden, "Changing the Ground Rules to Cease Subsidizing Sprawl," Where Do We Go From Here?, 2 March 2015, http://northbaydesignkit.blogspot.com/2015/03/changing-ground-rules-to-cease.html

Cindy Hadish, "Late-1800s Home Needs to Be Moved or Faces Demolition on Cedar Rapids Casino Site," Save CR Heritage, 20 February 2015, http://savecrheritage.org/late-1800s-home-needs-to-be-moved-or-faces-demolition-on-cedar-rapids-casino-site/

Alex Ihnen, "What's the Final Price Tag on a Vibrant Downtown St. Louis?," NextStL, 2 March 2015, http://nextstl.com/2015/03/whats-the-final-price-tag-on-a-vibrant-downtown-st-louis/



Alena Samuels, "Why Are Developers Still Building Sprawl?" City Lab, 24 February 2015, http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/02/why-are-developers-still-building-sprawl/385922/