Mayo Clinic Square

[Didier]

Downtown has, what, 160,000 daily workers? I hope you guys realize that those are the people shopping downtown, and many of them come from the suburbs. Just saying "don't focus on suburban shoppers" has become almost a meaningless cliche at this point.

[FISHMANPET]

Don't focus on getting someone to drive in from the suburbs and park and shop.

[EOst]

Maybe i'm one of like 5 people that would use it that way, but it can be pretty easy to say "I'll grab that after work" and take the train all the way to Nicollet Mall and then take the train home afterward or whatever.

This is why I was really hoping for a grocery store in the Nic on 5th space.

[amiller92]

Downtown has, what, 160,000 daily workers? I hope you guys realize that those are the people shopping downtown, and many of them come from the suburbs. Just saying "don't focus on suburban shoppers" has become almost a meaningless cliche at this point.

Those aren't suburban shoppers. Those are people who are already downtown, and obviously a key market for downtown retail.

[Didier]

Don't focus on getting someone to drive in from the suburbs and park and shop.

But is that really any different than "don't focus on getting someone to take a bus in from Seward to shop"?

[mister.shoes]

Residents of Seward don't have a *dale with acres of free parking.

[FISHMANPET]

Also to be truly pedantic, residents of Seward have a train to downtown, or maybe a bus and then a train if they live to the east and don't like walking.

But really the 100 year old idea where your large Dry Goods Store is downtown and you go there on Sunday to look in the windows or whatever doesn't exist anymore. We get most of our dry goods online or at Target or whatever. So if we want to make downtown retail "a thing" it should be stuff you can't get online or at Target.

Well, I can't get a well cooked meal online or at Target, so restaurants are a pretty good choice. There are quite a few services I can't get online (I would kill a man for an honest to God tailor downtown, not a seamstress, but a tailor). And it should be services that aren't going to be in every neighborhood (so like, dry cleaning is valuable to the local population but isn't going to attract me from my neighborhood that probably already has a dry cleaner). Maybe some specialized retail. Boutiques and the like, that's a totally different experience than you can get in most suburbs.

For a lot of people it's going to be a little harder to get downtown than it is to go to a *dale or MOA or something. So make it worth their while, don't give them what they can get at the mall, give them something else.

[Didier]

Residents of Seward don't have a *dale with acres of free parking.

But what retail would go downtown that would be uniquely appealing to people in neighborhoods like Seward?

[Didier]

For a lot of people it's going to be a little harder to get downtown than it is to go to a *dale or MOA or something. So make it worth their while, don't give them what they can get at the mall, give them something else.

I can't quite figure out if we're disagreeing, but assuming we are, it sounds like you're describing unique retail that draws people downtown. If so, how is that any different than putting in a "destination" chain store or restaurant?

[FISHMANPET]

I guess I was arguing against the idea that we need the "suburban" shopper but actually arguing against the idea that we need to recreate the suburban shopping experience to attract the suburban shopper.

But that destination retail is now going to places like Uptown and North Loop and other periphery neighborhoods and maybe downtown retail is dead bring on the food service.

[Didier]

This is getting tangental, but my point is simply that most people spending money downtown either work downtown or are there for entertainment, and most of these people don't live downtown.

Differentiating between a boutique clothes store that draws in David from the Wedge and a Rock Bottom Brewery that draws Derrick from Blaine seems pretty arbitrary.

[xandrex]

We've been trying to attract that suburban shopping for probably 60 years and failing. Urbanists are going to have to be patient for more shopping options until reinforcements arrive.

We've been failing because of trying to recreate suburbia without its land use. Nobody wants to go to Applebee's because they can get to one that's far easier in their own suburb (but, for what it's worth, walking by the Applebee's in Times Square showed it clearly could work in an urban area...plenty of people grabbing food inside).

But that's not what I was arguing. I was pointing out that we cannot simply write off people in the suburbs just because they happen to live outside the boundaries of Minneapolis. It's shortsighted. Until we have enough density where retail can thrive just on residents alone, downtown will have to rely on getting people in from places outside municipal boundaries (and suburban-style places inside the city too...SW Minneapolis might as well be Edina). If you don't find ways to bring those people in from outside, you get huge swaths of downtown Minneapolis and most of downtown St. Paul: A dead zone most days after 5 pm.

[Nick]

This is getting tangental, but my point is simply that most people spending money downtown either work downtown or are there for entertainment, and most of these people don't live downtown.

Differentiating between a boutique clothes store that draws in David from the Wedge and a Rock Bottom Brewery that draws Derrick from Blaine seems pretty arbitrary.

*Derique

I have plenty of suburban coworkers who buy mall-type things (clothes, etc) downtown over lunch.

[Wedgeguy]

Except that in some ways we need that suburban shopper during the transition. Downtown isn't quite to the point where retail can really sustain itself beyond big places like Target and convenience stores like the new Walgreens opening up. If we want other retail that urbanists can enjoy in the meantime, it needs to attract the suburban shopper too.

We've been trying to attract that suburban shopping for probably 60 years and failing. Urbanists are going to have to be patient for more shopping options until reinforcements arrive.

That said, I do almost all of my shopping downtown.

With the number of stores that seem to be thriving in the NL, I would say that finding stores that people who live and work downtown want to frequent would be a big plus. Your standard suburban fare will probably not cut it downtown. But unique stores with products that people want and not have to go along way for will always have a market.

Time to start looking outside the box for retailer to come into the area, similar to what MOA does. Get retailers that focus more on urban dwellers to take a serious look at this city and what it has to offer. We have the market, but the marketing to those tenants and customers has been badly done so far. I think the marketing is still with the mentality of 30 years ago and the start of the fall of the shopping malls. Why we have problems, is we have suburban minded developers that can't find their way out of a paper sack when it comes to market for the city core.

[Mdcastle]

I've never in my life gone downtown to go shopping. The last time I bought a physical item there was on jury duty in 1996. Don't try to put a store downtown to try to attract me, it's not going to work. There's nothing I need that I can't get from eBay, Amazon, Walmart, Menards, or Ax-Man. I don't believe my parents have bought anything from their since my mom quit work at multifoods to have me in 1973. So don't bother trying to cater to people driving in from the suburbs. Put something to benefit people that will shop there.

I knew someone that live in Schaumberg, and he didn't go to downtown Chicago either. I'd second the theory that most of the people there are people from the area or tourists.

Restaurants may be something different. I've never done so personally. Since Taco Bell is fine for me I don't, but I do know people that will go downtown to eat. I could tell Block E was going to be a disaster because it combined suburban blandness with urban hassles, so the worst of both worlds. The people I know go to the more unique offerings.

[John]

Why we have problems, is we have suburban minded developers that can't find their way out of a paper sack when it comes to market for the city core.

I do believe you're correct in this assertion. I would go even farther to say we have an issue with a conservative attitude peppered with a bland provincialism with many developers here. They are clueless to the contemporary retail scene in other thriving American cities.

Minneapolis surely has all the momentum and critical mass of both downtown residents and workers to support really good urban oriented retail downtown. It's one of the most booming cities in the US. It just needs a developer with some balls to take the plunge.

[min-chi-cbus]

Chipotle / US Bank Plaza is fast casual on the ground level (granted, opposite side of core) but they don't even have a doorway to the street, do they? We need more doorways to the street. At least with Block E=MC^2, it looks like we've netted more doors to the sidewalk.

Yes. Doorways and windows with PEOPLE INSIDE facing the street! Not the kind of thing you'll see at Walgreens' and CVS's -- with windows that face the street but you can't see inside the store and nobody inside the store can see the people on the street.

[kiliff75]

It's one of the most booming cities in the US. It just needs a developer with some balls to take the plunge.

Or a consortium....

[min-chi-cbus]

I don't know if it's necessarily unique/boutique. Useful/practical works too.

That's true...I forgot about practical. Practical is ideal, actually.

As an aside, this is a really great discussion about urban retail! It's clearly not a one-size-fits-all approach and there are a lot of competing interests at play. Perhaps this is why urban retail doesn't easily work in most cities, until they reach a certain critical mass.

[FISHMANPET]

Yes. Doorways and windows with PEOPLE INSIDE facing the street! Not the kind of thing you'll see at Walgreens' and CVS's -- with windows that face the street but you can't see inside the store and nobody inside the store can see the people on the street.

The Walgreens and CVSs on campus all have windows on the street and you can see in from the outside and see out from the inside.

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