Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

In Boston, however, previous attempts to create an improvement district have run into political opposition. The city?s most powerful police union opposed creation of a BID in Downtown Crossing in the late 1990s, for example, arguing that proposed security services would undermine police authority.
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Sounds like the typical sort of tribal bullshit that typically holds Boston back.

Still, I wonder if this is too little, too late for DTC. Its problems are a bit too fundamental right now for some extra street cleaning and flowerboxes to fix.
 
I seem to remember reading, before the recession, about talks with Harrod's to open a flagship North America store here. That strikes me as the kind of idea that could revitalize large destination urban shopping without selling out to a Target or Ikea.
 
Harrod's is in a weird state right now. They closed their one branch (Buenos Aires) and are contemplating opening one in Shanghai. It'd seem strange to me if they decided on a Boston branch rather than one in New York, if they came to North America at all.
 
czsz said:
Harrod's is in a weird state right now. They closed their one branch (Buenos Aires) and are contemplating opening one in Shanghai. It'd seem strange to me if they decided on a Boston branch rather than one in New York, if they came to North America at all.
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Another british company. Wagamama, opened their first US store here.
 
Yeah, but Wagamama isn't as massive / high end. You need a serious critical mass of very wealthy people to sustain a Harrod's, I think.
 
I mean too little, too late until there's an actual resurgence in the retail on offer and the hole in the midst of it all gets filled.

I'm not sure the location is that fantastic, anyway. How does squeezed between the empty-at-night Financial District and the Common a "natural" retail district make, anyway? Sure, it has great T access, but that doesn't seem to have arrested its decline. Maybe it's a long-term issue arising from South Bay gradually filling the vital retail needs of the inner city population. Or of gentrification making the boutique Back Bay a better-suited retail core.

All the life being breathed into DTC now has to do with the theatres and the colleges, but their presence there doesn't have much to do with its location, really. Nor will they contribute much to, or be significantly impacted by, the benefits of the BID.
 
I think it's time we looked beyond the idea that DTX has to be some kind of premiere shopping district/urban mall. It's abundantly clear that it can't compete with car-friendly shopping malls. I'd re-open Washington up to traffic and try to get people living above those stores, among other things.

Single-use districts are a bad idea, IMO, regardless of what that use might be. An exclusive shopping district is as bad as an exclusive office district, or whatever.
 
^
Agreed. I can't take credit for it, but it was someone on this Forum who pointed out that back in the good old shopping days of DTX there was no Cambridgeside Galleria directly North of Downtown, no South Bay or S. Shore Plza to the the South and there's certainly more retail now in the Back Bay and Fenway compared to back then too. Downtown Crossing will never regain the same retail vitality it once had. The way forward is more mixed use along with retail. It's still the core of the city and has great streetscapes and buildings all around so I think good things will come eventually, but it's moving at a snails pace now.
 
Washington Street is begging to be reopened to street traffic. It could quickly gain to vibrancy of a London Street (about the same typical building heights and street widths).
 
What exactly would opening it to traffic achieve? A few people can be dropped off by car a little closer to their destination? It's already clogged with trucks and emergency vehicles all the time.
 
For one it would stop reminding us of what a big failure downtown crossing has become as a pedestrian mall.
 
How about we open Washington street but close tremont from park to boylston or get it down to one or, god, two lanes), thickening the edge of the common to something fitting its use, and populate it with cafes, outdoor seating, etc (a las ramblas in bcn). There is tons of traffic outside park street t station: tourist, commuter, resident, you name it. In my personal "image of the city" it has always been Boston ground zero, from my first visit to now. As of now we cut it off from dtx by a 4 lane gauntlet of always speeding vehicles. An interesting precedent perhaps is also in Spain, the mid-level ped-only shopping streets between puerta del sol and gran via in Madrid. Leaving the metro you don't just pop up in the cavernous, double-loaded shopping streets or in a dept store, but in a spacious, iconic plaza, that acts as collector and funnel into the streets (very similarly scaled to winter street and the like, thou Washington street is much nearer than gran via). Thoughts? I'm thinking this all for the first time as I type, so i may not agree with myself in a few minutes.....
 
Washington (where it is open) currently runs in the opposite direction as Tremont, so your plan (which I think I like) may also need to involve reversing the direction of Washington to act as the main thoroughfare from Government Center to Boylston Street.

On the other hand, Tremont could be reduced without forcing any increase in capacity elsewhere. I do like the idea of taking a lane for outdoor seating, and agree it would connect Park Street station with Winter Street much more nicely.
 
I see no benefit from opening Washington Street to car traffic. The pedestrian mall worked just fine until the Federated and May department store chains merged, which led to the closing of Filene's.
 
I like Pierce's idea for Tremont.

I don't think the pedestrian mall was ever a major problem for Washington Street (nor was it much benefit). The success of pedestrian malls only ever correlates to the success of their surrounding neighborhoods.
 
Washington Street was never really a pedestrian mall anyway. It was nothing more than a street closed to vehicular traffic. This was partly a planning problem -- there is hardly reason to engage in the pedestrian zone because it's merely a walkway rather than a destination. This is why there is no reason to maintain it as a car free zone.

I, too, like Pierce's plan to narrow Tremont and build a grand promenade along the Commons.

Examples of good pedestrian malls:

Lincoln Rd, Miami Beach
Las Ramblas, Barcelona (which is so good, actually, that it doesn't even need retail to anchor it)
Faneuil Hall / Quincy Market, Boston
 
Also Church Street in Burlington VT and Third Street in Santa Monica CA, though I haven't been back to either one in a long time.
 
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