Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

Thanks for posting that list.

There's an interesting dynamic at play in DTX: clear deterioration on the retail front, but more than incremental improvement on the restaurant/bar front. Maybe this speaks to the increasing irrelevance of non-luxury urban retail districts... but the growing demand for foodie meccas?
 
Shepard said:
Thanks for posting that list.

There's an interesting dynamic at play in DTX: clear deterioration on the retail front, but more than incremental improvement on the restaurant/bar front. Maybe this speaks to the increasing irrelevance of non-luxury urban retail districts... but the growing demand for foodie meccas?
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Look at the discussion above.

You can get everything Borders, FYE, Tower Records etc sell cheaper online.

Food? Not so much
 
DTX will continue to evolve over time. Look at the south end, for years it's been all restaurants, now boutiques are opening up.
 
there also has to be an end to this type of problem:
Police quell disturbance in Downtown Crossing
By adamg - 12/6/10 - 4:48 pm
What began as two girls fighting around 3:30 ended as a general melee involving up to 100 people at Tremont and Winter streets that required Boston, MBTA and State Police to disperse and ended with at least one injured person.
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http://www.universalhub.com/2010/police-quell-disturbance-downtown-crossing

this is a start
It looked like all the other stalls in the nondescript jeweler's storefront at 365 Washington St. in Downtown Crossing. But the two guys behind the new M.I.B. Jewelers spread the word they were willing to buy stolen goods when they opened five weeks ago. Helped by a sudden police crackdown on other stores fencing stuff, business boomed - at least until today, when Boston Police announced that the stall was actually a sting operation staffed by two undercover cops.

At a press conference inside the narrow storefront today, Police Commissioner Ed Davis said the operation has resulted in 24 arrest warrants and the recovery of more than 230 items, including cell phones, flat-screen TVs and Hyde Park resident Brook Woodson's three beloved electric bass guitars - one of which Mayor Tom Menino handed back to him after Davis spoke......
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http://www.universalhub.com/2010/police-take-grinches-streets-boston

I know there is a huge sense of denial on this forum, "if it never happend to me then it never happened". I spent a lot of time in dtx in the 80's and 90's and was harassed and shoved or punched or had cigaretts flicked at me by gangs of kids many times, mostly if it was a large group of boys and a girl it was the girl. Also my roomate was a manager at Osco Drug and I heard lots of stories about problems with gangs of kids, none of wich ever made the newspaper. PS I care how many times you have been in dtx and never had a problem.
 
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It was a drug store like Walgreens. This one was on Winter St.
 
I know exactly what you're talking about but I think it really depends on how you carry yourself. Some people are more of targets than others. I've worked in the area and gone down there everyday for lunch and I hung out there after school back in the day all the time and never had a problem.


How do you live around here and not know what Osco's was?
 
I've never had a problem during lunch time, It was always on the week end. I never had a problem at night. One of the last times I was there at night(after leaving work) I would up sitting on the back of a purse snatcher.

Regardless of how one carries themselves they should be safe in the middle of Boston's shopping district. That's the kind of attitude I was complaining about.
 
Does anyone know if Nordstrom is/was ever interested in the Filene's Memorial Hole? They're the only high-demand chain (beside JCP) missing from the immediate-Boston area and are filling in holes at malls nationwide and locally (SSP, Northshore, Burlington, etc). It almost seems assumed and natural for Nordstrom to fill that hole. They would make a KILLING. JCPenney would too.

I still believe that DTX can sustain dept store shopping if the district and actual store roster is properly restored.
 
statler said:
In Ron's defense Osco's is different from Osoco's. I wasn't sure what he was referring to either.
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The post was edited after I asked my question. (Although I didn't realize there was ever Osco, or any drug chain other than CVS, downtown.)
 
Are there downtown JCPenney stores anywhere? From when I first became aware of them in the early 1960s, they were always in strip centers or enclosed malls, never downtown.
 
Like most department stores, they started in downtowns but now mostly live in malls.
 
Ron Newman said:
Are there downtown JCPenney stores anywhere? From when I first became aware of them in the early 1960s, they were always in strip centers or enclosed malls, never downtown.
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Manhattan Mall! (former Gimbel's flagship)

I actaully think JCP would fill the spot and demand better than Nordstrom would.
 
I always heard that Filene's and Jordan Marsh used their political power to keep any competition out of dtx. We can see how well that worked out. Filene's was headquartered in Boston and maybe Jordan Marsh too.
 
but there used to be lots of competition for those two downtown stores -- Gilchrist (now the Corner Mall), Kennedy's (next door to Filene's on Summer ST), RH White, RH Stearns (now senior housing), and others. Check out the Boston Department Store Blog thread.
 
Yes, I'm sure if Filene's and Jordan Marsh hadn't engaged in conspiratorially anticompetitive practices in 1970-something, DTC would be a paradise of department stores today, just like other American downtowns.
 
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