Architect speaks on latest retail trend.When it comes to designing old-fashioned "Main Street" retail projects, one of the nation's most highly regarded architects is Richard Huelsman, president of West Los Angeles-based MCG Architects. Among the main street-type projects MCG is designing are a 210,000-square-foot project on South Lake Avenue in Pasadena, the 25,000-square-foot Hollywood Galaxy on Hollywood Boulevard For uses other than the original street, see Hollywood Boulevard (disambiguation). Hollywood Boulevard is a boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States, beginning at Sunset Boulevard in the east and running northwest to Vermont Avenue, where it straightens out and a 16-block stretch of downtown Cleveland Downtown Cleveland is the central business district of the City of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. Reinvestment in the area in the mid-1990s spurred a rebirth that continues to this day, with over $2 billion in capital projects slated to involve the downtown area over the next few . In a recent interview, Huelsman offered his views on the newest retail trend. Question: What are the special challenges of developing main-street areas, as opposed to indoor malls? Answer: In a regional mall you are really controlling the shopping environment. On a street, you don't have that control and have to give the shopper ease of movement among shops on either side of the street. Sometimes you can do this by closing off the street like at Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade The Third Street Promenade is a pedestrian street in Santa Monica, California, United States. It is considered one of the premier shopping destinations in West Los Angeles and frequently draws crowds from all over Los Angeles County. . We have nice weather in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, , but climate is still a consideration. In a desert area you've got to have good shading and screens to cover where people walk. There's also the challenge of providing good lighting and safety, to avoid dark niches where a person will feel threatened. And you have to create signs where people driving and walking by can identify the user. Q: Are there areas around town you see as especially ripe for this type of redevelopment? A: There are some tremendous opportunities in downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area. The sprawling, multi-centered megacity is such that its downtown core is often considered just another district like Hollywood or for developers to create wonderful streetscapes. One thing I look forward to is the planned sports complex. This would be wonderful for downtown because of the traffic and income it would generate. In other cities, when a sports complex goes in, there is a steady 35 to 40 percent rise in sales of nearby retail shops. Q: What is an example of a local open-air retail redevelopment that has worked well? A: One of my favorites is Sunset Plaza along Sunset Boulevard Sunset Boulevard is a street in the western part of Los Angeles County, California, that stretches from Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Coast Highway at the Pacific Ocean in the Pacific Palisades. , where we've seen a wonderful mixture of new residential, offices, retail and entertainment in the last few years. There's an architectural warmth and vibrancy among the different users that calls you as you drive by to get out and walk to the cafes, and shop and participate. Q: When malls came into vogue years ago, they were popular because everything was available conveniently. Were there other features responsible for the popularity of enclosed malls? A: As the population base expanded, urban-area downtowns weren't large enough to handle it, and people moved to the suburbs and didn't want to drive downtown to shop. People in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. shop very differently than Europeans, who make a day of shopping. They'll go to one shop to buy their fish, to another for cheese and another for their socks and another for their shoes. Americans want one-stop shopping and it's our challenge to give it to them - to shop, be entertained and eat out all at the same time. In California we have a benefit that not too many cities have: We have wonderful weather out here, so we can afford to do open-air malls. Q: Your firm is doing a lot of open-air redevelopment in the Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. area, such as your South Lake Avenue project in Pasadena. Will it be a touristy destination like Old Town Pasadena Built on the foundation of one of the oldest, most beautiful and most prosperous cities in California, Old Pasadena arose from the ashes of a decaying bowery that had a well deserved patina of homeless and hippie. , which has had so much acclaim? A: Old Town was developed to bring out-of-towners into Pasadena and have more than just a provincial town. South Lake Avenue is now going to be developed to complement that project. The people who live in Pasadena also wanted a place to be entertained, to eat out on an upscale basis. In any good, successful main-street project there's a combination of different kinds of shops - just like there's a combination of different kinds of office space and housing. The South Lake Avenue project will be designed as very sophisticated, very elegant shops. So they will be very much in character with the existing area. Some main streets really appreciate that, other main streets would rather have excitement and neon lights. Old Town has a little bit more of that glitz glitz Informal n. Ostentatious showiness; flashiness: "a garish barrage of show-biz glitz" Peter G. Davis. tr.v. , while South Lake Avenue is more sedate se·date v. To administer a sedative to; calm or relieve by means of a sedative drug. and upscale. |
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