Fulton Mall: Death By Compromise?
The Pratt Center for Community Development has released its full report–analysis and recommendations–on the Fulton Mall. Here are the five “strategies” the report recommends following. Clearly, they are trying to walk a very fine line balancing all the class and racial sensitivities that are all rolled up in the issue now. 1. Address the physical…
The Pratt Center for Community Development has released its full report–analysis and recommendations–on the Fulton Mall. Here are the five “strategies” the report recommends following. Clearly, they are trying to walk a very fine line balancing all the class and racial sensitivities that are all rolled up in the issue now.
1. Address the physical appearance of the Mall with innovative and culturally sensitive facade improvement (huh? sounds like politically-correct jibberish to us), building conservation and new building design techniques that embrace the aesthetic theme of “old meets new.” (We have no idea what this means but it sounds like a recipe for confusion and mediocrity.)
2. Better utilize buildings by activating vacant upper stories and carefully planning a mix of uses that supports the dynamism and diversity of the Mall and makes it more of a 24-hour place. (No quibbles with this one.)
3. Promote and enhance the current retail themes found on the Mall: urban wear, Hip Hop fashion and music, uniquely Brooklyn. (What, no Banana Republic? What about that diversity?)
4. Improve the public realm and enliven the side streets to enhance the experience of shoppers and visitors on Fulton Street, as well as workers and residents to the north and south. (Ah, so this is where they throw the gentrifiers a bone. The only problem is it sounds like they’ll have to wade through the penis-engraved tooth caps to get to their precious cafes. Not gonna work in our opinion.)
5. Engage a broad and diverse group of stakeholders in the planning process from this point forward. (We’re all just one big happy multi-cultural family!)Fulton Mall 2006 Report [Pratt Center]
Photo by f. trainer
i don’t know- it seems like a tall order- should we do the same on canal street?
Anon 2:39, that’s precisely what I mean (I’m Anon 2:03). (Linens & Things was the wrong example, I believe it’s Laytner’s Linens which is in the city.) I could see another B&N on Fulton for the office crowd, and it doesn’t have to be at the western end of Fulton and so close to the Court St store, it could be closer to the Flatbush end. There are three B&N stores in midtown Manhattan within 8 blocks of each other, and they’re always full of people. There are enough people flocking to Fulton Mall to keep a new B&N in business. BB& Beyond? Sure! It’s the best housewares store in the city for variety, price, depth of inventory. If you can’t find what you want there, forget it, it probably doesn’t exist. I don’t know about anyone else, but whenever I go to BB&B on 6th Ave & 18th, I see all kinds of people shopping there. As I said, shopping on Fulton Mall doesn’t need to be “luxury.” It needs to fill a void and a demand for useful, every day merchandise which it now sorely lacks. Also, I don’t think, Umar, we’re being stalinist in expressing a desire to have a good shopping area in our backyard. After all, it once existed on Fulton, and it wasn’t stalinist at all…quite the contrary.
There *was* a Woolworth’s in the Fulton Mall years ago when there were such things as Woolworth’s. (sigh, Target’s and Kmart’s just are not the same as the five and dime 🙁
There is already a large B&N on Court Street not far from Borough Hall, that strip also has a Starbuck’s and the multiplex theater. All of these are with in a two minutes walk from the upper end of the FM, so don’t think that they need to be repeated in FM.
Linens ‘n’ Things? Aren’t are a whole passel of linen and house wear stores in the FM ? But since we’re tossing out suggestions how about a Bed Bath and Beyond. After all, cheap poly blend sheets that pill up and have to be tossed in a year, are really not a bargain compared to cotton sheets that will last you for years. And often I find that BB and B actually has the lowest prices on some home electronics.
And how about other discount stores like: Century 21, Filenes’s, Daffy’s ? Still in keeping with the bargain shopping feel of the FM, but with great appeal to the Borough Hall lunch shoppers.
But that’s the point Umar, the people who shop at the FM were polled and the ‘majority’ were in favor of a facelift for the mall. So it seems that the only ones who want the mall to remain the way it is are the property owners and the merchants. It has nothing to do with race, religion, yuppie, urbanists, ohio or long island.
I agree with Brownstoner, the High End and Low End are diametrically opposed, mutually exclusive and have absolutely no chance at co-existence. It’s a zero sum proposition. Either you stick to the status quo or you radically change the mall to target a more well heeled demographic group/clientele. You can’t have both and be successful. The high end shopper will stick out like a sore thumb (regardless of race) and after a few horrific incidents, e.g., muggings, assaults, etc., these shoppers will abandon this futile urban experiment and hightail it back to Manhattan and the suburbs to do their shopping. IMHO, Fulton Mall is critical to the Downtown Brooklyn Development Plan and the future prospects of the borough. As it presently exist, FM is a problem and it has the be changed. The $1mm question is how?
Fulton Mall doesn’t even have to be luxury shopping to attract more shoppers. What FM needs is decent, varied shopping…good housewares; middle-of-the road (ok, maybe even some higher-end) apparel; a book store (dare I say B&N), a stationary/office supply store, maybe a Linens & Things-type store where you can buy sheets, towels, etc. (Never mind Macy’s, it’s a lost cause unless there’s some shake-up at Federated management.) Where-oh-where are the Woolworth’s & Lamston’s variety stores where you could run in and buy a spool of sewing thread or other kind of household necessity? More restaurants would lure nearby Metrotech workers out of their cubicles and eventually other workers who will move into future office buildings. The mall should feature retail that attracts not only people from afar, young and old, but also nearby residents who, as a previous poster said, usually go to Manhattan to shop. I don’t think any such improvements would be considered racist or not-PC. Keep the sneaker/cellphone/electronics stores if you must, but the truth is everyone should have a decent and varied shopping experience in downtown Brooklyn, the way it used to be when there were several department stores all catering to different clientele…A&S, Martin’s, Korvette’s, May’s, as well as smaller, independent stores. Why should we Brooklynites have to go to Manhattan or even NJ to shop when there’s all this prime retail real estate just sitting at Fulton Street waiting to be fully utilized. FM has tremendous potential, and it’s a shame that a paralysis seems to have taken over as people struggle with what to do about it.
BrownBomber, might a high end shopping district not be better sited on Montague Street? Why the need to take a shopping area that clearly does not cater to the demographic you are talking about and change it, when you have a district that does cater to that demo and is currently being overrun by real estate agents?
I think that the “blight” of the mall comes from the appearance of the stores that are there and not the stores or the clientelle themselves. Change the appearance of the stores and then let the market forces go to work.
BTW, in addition to the movie theatre on Fulton Street, there was the old Duffield (sp?) Theatre which survived until the early eightys. Its now the home of the Brooklyn USA store. Theatres were once a vibrant part of the mall, but when landlords started getting heat for shootings and drug use, they shut them down. I think you’ll have the same problem trying to build a new theatre in the area. If it is designed to appeal to a broad cross section of folks it will work (just look at the success of the Court Street theatre). If it is going to appeal only to current mall shoppers or the wall streeters buying up these million dolar properties from PH, PS, BH, CG, etc. (the two ends of the current Brooklyn spectrum) it will be doomed to failure.
UGH, great post. I concur wholeheartedly. You want a voice, then stand up and be heard. Personally, I’d like to see the mall turned into the Mall at Short Hills or something like Boston’s Faneuil Hall Mall. IMHO, Brooklyn would be better served if the area was strictly comprised of high end dept stores, shops and restaurants. It would be a welcomed addition to the “New Brooklyn” though many of us are too afraid to come out and voice such a politically incorrect opinion.
Brooklyn has enough urban wear specialty stores on Broadway and Pitkins, Flatbush and Church Avenues. This is not an underserved market by any stretch of the imagination. What we don’t have is an ultra high end shopping district. Why should we have to leave our borough and travel to Manhattan or the suburbs to engage in fine shopping? On the cuisine end we’re making great strides, e.g., Smith St., 5th Ave and Dekalb, but we’re seriously lacking on the shopping front. There’s enough money concentrated in Downtown Brooklyn to support such a luxury shop development. Further, the size and location of Fulton Mall is ideal – at the Gateway to Brooklyn. In time market forces will turn this into such a mall and it will be, nostalgia aside, for the better.
If we can support the condemnation of people’s homes and business at AY then we can certainly condemn the blight at FM. Why the double standard? It’s permissible to take from the rich and give to the richer but inconvenience the poor and all hell breaks out!!
i think the mall is pretty vibrant and healthy the way it is, and i agree that merchants have no incentive to change what they’re doing. that said, isn’t there talk of making willoughby an extension of the pedestrian area, all the way up to adams street? that might be a nice place for a strip with a slightly different vibe– more of a coffee shop/restaurant/national retail chain/boutique area that would attract different groups to the greater mix. that stip, unlike fulton, is pretty depressing and run-down currently, even though it gets tons of foot traffic.