The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts is holding a design competition to redevelop three existing strip malls in Tempe, Phoenix, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
The competition - "Flip a Strip" - has a submission deadline of March 31, 2008.
I really enjoyed reading the competition's welcome letter from Susan Krane, the Director of the Museum, in which she explained that, "the very mention of Strip Malls tends to incite disregard, if not outright disdain—particularly among people accustomed to the main streets of mid-western towns or the urban cores of east-coast cities. Yet in the west, and in post-war suburbs across the country, Strip Malls are a fact of life. They are ubiquitous and familiar to the point of invisibility; they are the wallflowers of thousands of streetscapes that millions of people travel daily."
"They are ubiquitous and familiar to the point of invisibility; they are the wallflowers of thousands of streetscapes that millions of people travel daily"
As I tried to think about strip malls - as a present element in the urban/suburban environment - I was able to form a mental image of what a strip mall "is supposed to look like". That's easy - it's a shopping facility with stores in a row (the "strip") with a large parking lot in the front.
As I sharpened the image, my strip mall is populated with a particular combination of stores and is located in a place that is likely inferior to newer shopping centers. In fact, my strip mall is type of place I pass by on the way to another place.
I know my image of the strip mall is not a comprehensive description of the strip mall trend because two of the main elements that define the building type (the strip of stores with parking in front) are still common in may retail shopping areas. It sort of dawned on me that they did not actually cease building strip malls in the 1980's - they are still building them today. In all kinds of places.
Retail shopping centers have undergone many changes over the last 30 years but there is a certain pervasiveness about the strip mall concept - almost to the point of invisibility. On the other hand, there is an earlier "generation" of strip malls that fit within a common image of the building type (and newer generation malls that follow a similar development, but likely have newer and fresher stores).
As retail trends continue to evolve the challenge may be to figure out how to best deal with the older-generation strip malls to better adapt to the changing preferences of shoppers and retailers. In some cases that may mean a fresh image and new retail tenants - in other it may require redevelopment of the site.
Flip-a-Strip is a great concept for a design competition and I am hopeful they post some of the best entries. They often offer significant plots of land (and existing built-out space) on major roadways. I think many of them have a nostalgic appeal and they can serve as buffers between residential areas and intense commercial districts.
Any ideas of how to best turnaround that old strip mall?
(All the photos on this post were taken along Lyndale Avenue in Bloomington, MN - a great roadway to view different generations of strip malls).
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Filed under Community Planning with 2 Comments
|2 Responses to “"Flip a Strip" Design Competition - New Ideas to Redevelop Strip Malls”
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March 13th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
One strip mall redevelopment obstacle may be trying to coordinate the future use(s) with the site's actual location.
Clearly, there is very wide variety of strip malls types (each with their own characteristics, retailers, locational advantages and challenges). However, I believe one common (although not defining) element of strip malls is their placement in locations which are accessible to automobiles (e.g. nearby highways or major roadways, along commercial corridors). This seems to make a lot of sense - I guess if I were siting a new mall, the more traffic (by whatever means people access the site) the better.
Traffic in itself does not make a site un-redevelopable - but it can constrain the site's appeal to different types of users. From a planning perspective - would a residential project or school make sense along a major roadway? Sometimes they do, and other times they don't.
Again, this observation is very general in nature (in fact, I've often seen community use facilities in strip mall spaces - such as charter schools, religious centers, health clinics) but I think there's an element of the "common strip mall location" that is relevant to the discussion about redevelopment potential.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:43 am
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