10th Anniversary Post: MedQuarter and Westdale

Cedar Rapids Public Library's temporary downtown location,
where ideas for my earliest posts were hatched

In May 2013, I continued the momentum from starting Holy Mountain a month earlier. I posted 12 times, down from 14 the previous month, but not equaled since. I included three photo essays--on downtown construction (while noting the sudden departure of union picketers), my sabbatical spent partly in and around the temporary downtown library in the Armstrong's building, and the installation of the skywalk across 1st Avenue between the Doubletree hotel. I liked being where stuff was happening.

Another type of post I haven't employed as much since is commentary on national politics. I had complaints about scandalmongering, misrepresentations of the Affordable Care Act, and overall dysfunction in Congress. The posts reflected the underlying rationale for concern with place, rather than with place making itself: "The real losers in all this are the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the "other" and the environment," I wrote on May 15.

I was hardly less grumpy about place making in Cedar Rapids, as the month presented two major development projects that looked nothing like urbanism: the development of a medical quarter anchored by our two hospitals adjacent to downtown, and the redevelopment of the former Westdale Mall site into a massive strip mall.

Plans for Westdale, printed in the Cedar Rapids Gazette on May 10, 2013, showed a senior center, a hotel, offices, and "mixed use" development, where there had once been a 1970s-era shopping mall.  Mostly, however, 

This is definitely old stuff. What they're essentially going to do is rearrange the many many parking spaces, and reconfigure the stores. Beyond the parking lots, the new Westdale will be no better integrated into the city than the old one was.... The designers' schematics all show happy people walking, but they all got there by car. Technically you could walk or bike to the new Westdale--just as you can now--but you would be foolish to make the attempt.

The city, for its part, was kicking in $10 million to make this happen.

Some of what they planned has come to pass. I was out there last fall to do Black Friday Parking. It's pretty much a sea of parking and big stores, though.

Westdale, Black Friday 2022

I also saw apartments and a hotel under construction, within easy walking distance of the big stores, but hardly walkable.

The MedQuarter event was mainly to solicit public comment. Their big plan full of promises would come later in 2013. Their goal seemed to be to be more attractive to visitors to the medical facilities, regardless of the impact on the broader community. "This would be done with better signage, prettier landscaping, and clearer branding." And plenteous parking. In 2013 I described the area between 5th and 12th Streets SE as "a large swath of large buildings and large parking lots." And that's still what's there, a great blankness instead of connection between the east side neighborhoods and downtown.

Medical parking lots, January 2018

The development of the MedQuarter and Westdale show that Cedar Rapids remains all in on the car as the normal way to get around. This is understandable--the city is built on cheap real estate and easy access to anything by car--if not commendable. Carrying that forward, and meeting the expectations of current residents, are stronger incentives than adapting to an uncertain future. The density and connections that make walkable areas vibrant and sustainable continue to be afterthoughts, but those are what will get us to a sustainable future for all, not bigger cars and easy parking.

MedQuarter businesses and the city share interests in sustaining viable businesses and job creation. But the city's interests extend beyond that set, and I'm not hearing that the businesses consider that theirs do. I hope the SSMID will do more than turn an empty quarter into an empty quarter with a brand and better signage, but is there any reason to anticipate they will?

Not yet.

Ten years ago, it was enough to revel in my new knowledge and criticize the old ways of doing things. In time, though, the euphoria of the new wears off, and one comes to realize the depth of the challenge in making change. Change is difficult, and slow. Yesterday's Gazette featured a letter to the editor wondering why the city doesn't provide (even) more parking in New Bohemia. Like most of the country, we in Cedar Rapids are used to getting around by car, and if gas is up to $3.50 a gallon, and the weather is occasionally wacky, well, we can get used to that, too. The long haul required of urbanists seems to be considerably longer than a mere ten years!

SEE ALSO: Ellen Dunham-Jones TED talk on "Retrofitting Suburbia"

End of May 2013: the river was up again!

Black Friday Parking 2022

Strip mall, Edgewood Rd SW, 9:45 a.m.

On the southwest side of Cedar Rapids, there is a triangle formed by three stroads: Edgewood Road, Wiley Boulevard, and Williams Boulevard. Average daily traffic counts are roughly 19000 for Edgewood, 9000 for Williams, and (from 2017) 14000 for Wiley. Until about ten years ago, they surrounded Westdale Mall; since that was demolished, they serve a large Wal-Mart, a large Target, and numerous shopping plazas and stand-alone stores.

The area made for an irresistible subject for my 2022 #BlackFridayParking survey, part of the annual Strong Towns event. The area is clearly meant to be driven to; it is served by three bus routes (8,10,12) but the system runs only during the day, and today was running a reduced version of that due to the holiday weekend. Walking between stores is extremely difficult, I can attest. There's a lot of traffic, moving quickly, from various directions. I relied on my remaining agility and the kindness of strangers to get places and return safely to you.

It was a lovely day, sunny and unseasonably warm. I got to Target about 10:00 a.m., too late for the doorbuster sales, but still in time to see a sizeable crowd of cars and shoppers.

Even so, much of the parking lot was unused.

Target, 3400 Edgewood Rd SW, lot 2/3 full at 9:45 a.m.

Down the street at Wal-Mart, the situation was even more pronounced: Many, many shoppers and cars...

View from the front door

...but much unused parking.

Wal-Mart Supercenter, 3601 29th Av SW, lot 1/2 full at 10:00 a.m.

Away from the two retail giants, crowds were thinner and parking lots were emptier.

Strip mall across from Wal-Mart

Kohl's had some traffic near the entrance to their lot...

...but away from the entrance ir was empty.

Kohl's, 3030 Wiley Blvd SW, lot 1/3 full at 10:00 a.m.

The parking lots on the grounds of the former Westdale Mall were glaringly empty.

On the other hand, from a distance it looked like the parking lot of Menards (home improvement store) at Wiley and Williams was very full.

As I forded these lots, I also forded a number of access roads--some, as I said, busy with fast-moving traffic, and some seeing no cars at all. This leads from the Kohl's to Wiley Boulevard, but can only be accessed by southbound traffic.

It made me think that, as much of this event is designed to complain about parking craters, big-box stores and strip malls also generate an excess of infrastructure. Maybe next year we could do Black Friday Access Roads?

Meanwhile, the Westdale area is beginning to see a little of the development promised when the city sunk a fortune into its redevelopment. There is a mixed-use development with apartments.

Parkway West, 3998 Westdale Parkway

These apartments are within walking distance of a lot of shops. I wonder if anyone ever does walk? And what might be the attraction of living here, as opposed to a more human-scaled locale? Price? Highway access? 

The apartments are flanked by a hotel (Tru, a Hilton brand) and a construction project that will become a hotel.

Will these projects generate any foot traffic at all? And given the inherent risks of crossing acres of auto infrastructure, would it be a good idea if they did?

And then there's this guy, across from the Westdale bus stop.

Car wash? Oil change? Tire store? It's auto-oriented, in any case, consistent with its surroundings.

The main purpose of Strong Towns' annual #BlackFridayParking event is to highlight to #EndParkingMinimums, provisions of zoning codes that require large stores to have even larger parking lots. Cedar Rapids' zoning code has those provisions, but the parking lots I surveyed seem to be substantially larger than required, albeit I haven't counted spaces.

Even if zoning requirements do not fully account for this appalling design, public policy has a hand in it. Property tax policy allows property owners to pay low rates on large swaths of unproductive land. City officials everywhere have a preference for big "wins," including attracting and accommodating a large franchise operation, over the economic gardening that nurtures local businesses. (See Alter 2022 on the many benefits of small locally-owned businesses over the big-box franchises.)

The result is a car-chocked landscape, full of expensive infrastructure that the widely dispersed businesses ultimately can't support, stressing drivers and practically prohibiting pedestrians. For financial, environmental, and community reasons, we need to do better. We have what we have in unholy triangles like the one I haunted today, but we need to start thinking differently and designing our cities better. As they say at Strong Towns, "Having 'enough' parking is always going to be less important than creating a place people want to be."

SEE ALSO

"Black Friday 2021," 26 November 2021 [Blairs Ferry Road NE from Fleet Farm to Wal-Mart]

"Black Friday 2016," 25 November 2016 [same area that I visited today]

Lauren Fisher, "14 Photos That Prove We Have Too Much Parking--Even on Black Friday," Strong Towns, 25 November 2022

Daniel Herriges, "The #BlackFridayParking Exception That Proves the Rule," Strong Towns, 25 November 2022

Addison del Maestro, "Unplanned Vacancies," Deleted Scenes, 12 May 2022 [paywall] [which I haven't crossed so it might not be any good] [but he's brilliant so it probably is]

Jaclyn Peiser, "Black Friday Isn't What It Used to Be. Here's Why," Washington Post, 25 November 2022 [another annual tradition is declaring Black Friday "over"] [and indeed it may have run its course, or nearly so] [in the meantime we have all this parking]

Black Friday Parking 2016

Entrance to Westdale off 33rd Avenue...
Decidedly unwalkable

In 2013 the City of Cedar Rapids awarded $11.7 million in economic development tax breaks for the redevelopment of Westdale Mall, a 1970s creation that had fallen on hard times what with the Internet and an even grander mall down the road in Coralville. Two years later, the city provided guarantee for an $11.5 million bank loan. The original plan had a fair amount of greenwashing in it--walking trails, affordable housing for the elderly--that disappeared over time as costs mounted.

This year's Black Friday Parking walk reveals what taxpayers helped buy. While there is still ongoing construction, what remains on the site are stores but without the public features the mall used to offer: a place to walk (albeit one you had to drive to get to), a common area, public restrooms, and a warm place to wait for the bus. When the Super Wal-Mart is kicking your ass on walkability, you've got problems.

What also remains on site is parking. A lot of parking. J.C. Penney's was doing a brisk business Friday afternoon, but even so there was plenty of parking outside.

The parking lots of Westdale were at best 50 percent full. While it's true that the Black Friday phenomenon may be losing its commercial mojo, and that the highly popular University of Iowa Hawkeyes football team was playing archrival Nebraska this afternoon, it's fair to say that the new Westdale has vastly overbuilt parking. I don't know whether it's due to city requirements or the developer's choice, but either way there are civic costs to overloading the town with parking lots. Someone is on the hook for keeping them in repair, plowing them, &c. The adjoining streets are a dreadful mix of car traffic and unattractive shopping plazas full of chain stores and restaurants:

Edgewood Rd looking north from 29th Street

Edgewood Road view of one of the plazas that comprise the new Westdale

Down the street at the big box stores, the Black Friday parking story was much the same, albeit the parking lots were somewhat less frightening to walk across. Wal-Mart's parking lot was about 55 percent full.

Near the store

Farther out

Plenty of parking at the strip mall next door

Target's lot was I'd guess about 40 percent full.

Westdale Mall-That-Was sits on a triangle formed by three stroads that truly are traffic sewers: Edgewood Road, Wiley Boulevard and Williams Boulevard. That's a lot of accumulated bad planning, and a lot of surface parking, but now that's all water under the bridge. Those costs are sunk, that ship has sailed. It can't have been worth $11.7 million to polish it, but I'm pretty sure it's not worth trying to impose urbanism on it either. It should at least serve as an object lesson for future development: Let whatever you do be human-scaled, let it be walkable, and let development decisions rely on market mechanisms like price signals instead of how much pull a given developer has with the city government.

A cold-looking blogger waits for the bus.
To quote our new state motto, "Suck it up, buttercup!"

SEE ALSO:
"Black Friday Parking," Strong Towns, 25 November 2016
Sarah Kobos, "Black Friday Proves We Have Too Damn Much Parking," Modern Cities, 23 November 2016, 
B.A. Morelli, "'Open for Business,'" Cedar Rapids Gazette, 20 November 2016, 1A, 7A

LAST YEAR'S MODEL: "Black Friday Parking," 27 November 2016

Post No. 150: NO! NO! Not a SIXPENCE!!

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1825) knew a bad deal when he met one

Those readers concerned about the supply of America's chutzpah resources may take comfort. John Frew, who is leading the redevelopment of Cedar Rapids's dying Westdale Mall, has determined that the $10.5 million city taxpayers have contributed to this project is not going to be enough, not by a long shot. If this commercial property and its sprawling parking area, completely inaccessible by anything but motor vehicles, is going to live again, it's going to take another $11.5 million. A very white elephant--by comparison, the current phase of downtown redevelopment, which has some actual civic significance, will cost about $3 million--just got whiter.

The city hasn't immediately responded to this ask, instead forming a Special Westdale Review Committee of the City Council to review and make recommendation. City Manager Jeff Pomeranz made a most guarded public statement: The amount and terms and conditions of assistance are fluid, depending on negotiations.

Given that it hasn't yet been agreed to, it is premature to become outraged at the wanton expenditure of public money on a project that has no civic benefit. So I'll have to settle for being irked that Mr. Frew apparently felt very comfortable asking for the extra dough. What does this say about the relationship of developers to city government? About the relative weight in policy decisions of the public interest versus personal connections? And if anyone thinks that, in the end, they won't get whatever they ask for, I would welcome a reassuring communication.

Thankfully, the ask is "sufficiently significant" (in the words of reporter Rick Smith) that Pomeranz recommended City Council consideration, and that the Gazette reported it on the front page. How much goes on that doesn't trip these triggers?

If Westdale Mall can once again be the site of successful businesses, that would be great. But it should be up to businesses to make those decisions, without government subsidies. Even in its heyday, Westdale was probably not supplying the revenue-per-acre that you would find in a well-designed downtown. And, surrounded by "stroads" as it is, it will never be integrated into a walkable community. (See this TED Talk by architect Ellen Dunham Jones featuring some ways mall projects have achieved real connection.) Westdale could crumble into rubble without impacting the City of Cedar Rapids.

Reading this news, I immediately flashed on a quotation attributed to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a South Carolinian who participated in the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, and was later appointed ambassador to France by President George Washington. While there, he and two other American representatives were approached by men purporting to speak for the French government who demanded substantial bribes in order to settle the issues that existed between the two countries. (The incident became known as the "XYZ Affair.") Pinckney's response, later prettied up into "Millions for defense, not a cent for tribute," actually was something like "NO! NO! Not a sixpence!"

In this budget-conscious era, we need to demand greater caution and accountability in public spending. Transparency should be easiest at the close-by local level. We need to learn to say "NO! NO! Not a sixpence!" to dubious investments of our money, whether they be malls on the edge of town, baseball palaces in cornfields, or water parks that require their own interstate exits. At the very least we ought to rid ourselves of the illusions that these projects are somehow going to pay for themselves in the long run, or that these sorts of deals are the only way to get the town we "deserve."

All this budgetary stuff comes as I reflect on two years of this blog. Reading and writing, listening and watching have taught me a lot, and I continue to feel that within all of us are the seeds of a community that nurtures, strengthens and values each of its members. New urbanism, to which I attach, is one movement that is trying to build a brighter-yet-workable future. The Westdale stuff reminds me that while we work for this vision we also need to cry out against public actions that work against community-building. "First do no harm," said Hippocrates.

Second, the city should not be paying for projects that waste public money and harm the city's capacity. NO! NO! Not a sixpence!

SOURCE: Rick Smith, "Westdale Mall Developer Asks for More Upfront Money to keep Construction Going," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 13 April 2015, http://thegazette.com/subject/news/developer-asks-for-more-upfront-money-at-westdale-mall-to-keep-construction-going-20150413

EARLIER POST ON WESTDALE: "A Big Ho-Hum," 12 May 2013

A big ho hum

The new management of Westdale Mall rolled out their plans for redeveloping the moribund commercial space. It may work for them, but from the community perspective it's nothing special. It does nothing to make connections where they are lacking in this city, and does nothing to prepare for a future without cheap oil.

Here's the new map, from Friday's Gazette...

(Cedar Rapids Gazette, 10 May 2013, p. 1A)

... which also has an online report with pretty pictures.

This is definitely old stuff. What they're essentially going to do is rearrange the many many parking spaces, and reconfigure the stores. Beyond the parking lots, the new Westdale will be no better integrated into the city than the old one was. Westdale is an island of sorts, bordered by wide roads that bear heavy car traffic: Williams Boulevard, Edgewood Road, Wilson Avenue and 29th Avenue. It's part of a bigger swath of land from 16th Avenue to US 30 that is a hideous succession of commercial strips. To see what I mean, map a location like "2315 Williams Blvd SW, Cedar Rapids IA 52404" and zoom out to see the area around it.

The designers' schematics all show happy people walking, but they all got there by car. Technically you could walk or bike to the new Westdale--just as you can now--but you would be foolish to make the attempt.

To be fair, changing the future is probably too much to expect from one project, which is about converting underutilized space back into profitable commercial territory. There arguably is some public interest in achieving this modest goal, although the $10 million the city is expecting to kick in is surely excessive. But for those who hope to make Cedar Rapids a better place to live, the new Westdale will be a big ho hum.

I wish they'd put the casino out there.

[Added 10/7/13: TED Talk by Ellen Dunham-Jones on retrofitting suburbia, with many more imaginative ideas]