Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Wetlands Karma strikes hard: Shoppes at Wyndham Village parking lot is a thrill ride

Now that's a thrilling driving experience!

A reader tipped me off to the violently undulating parking lot at Shoppes at Wyndham Village - a shiny-new development dedicated less than a year ago.

This mess reminds us that it's not just tree-huggers who have issues with how site plans are imposed on wetlands. Engineers need to reach some manner of negotiation with pre-existing conditions as well. Thumb your nose at those conditions and you get exactly what you see above.

Back on November 23, 2008 I noted that Carstensen Construction's forfeiture of $46,000 to avoid a federal lawsuit in its destruction of 2.6 acres of wetlands to accommodate the development's dismal strip-mall site plan seemed pretty cost effective. I guess I was wrong about that - what's the going rate for asphalt nowadays?

Somewhere beneath the cracked, heaving impermeable surface of the Shoppes' epic parking lot, the former precipitation- and melt-absorbing landscape you see below is inexorably imposing its will. 

Poor site plans are expensive.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Is The Mall Dead? | Newsweek.com

We can only hope, right? Perhaps better public space can be one positive result of frugal times.

In local Shoppes at Wyndham Village news: Tenants could move into fledgling retail center early in 2009.

“We’re looking at about roughly four to five (tenants) per building, including a coffee place and a couple of sit-down restaurants,” [Spokesman Gary] Rosenberg said. “I know the specialty retailers will be targeting women’s clothing.”

Carstensen will likely announce the first outbuilding tenants later this month, with the businesses scheduled to start opening early next year, Rosenberg said.

We can only hope, right?

From Newsweek.com:

Is The Mall Dead?

With lighter wallets and heavier burdens, Americans are rethinking their conspicuous consumption. That's bad news for retailers.

Tony Dokoupil
Newsweek Web Exclusive

There's something growing in the New Jersey Meadowlands, the marsh just nine miles west of Manhattan—and it isn't the gentle ferns that the bucolic name suggests. Instead, what's emerging is a man-made behemoth, the largest and most expensive mall ever built in the United States. Originally slated to open this month, Xanadu is now scheduled for completion next summer. Lawsuits, political grandstanding and construction delays have nearly doubled the mall's cost to $2.3 billion. When it's finished, the half-mile "retailtainment" center will be a Vegas-meets-Disneyland pleasure dome with the country's tallest Ferris wheel and first indoor artificial ski slope. There will also be a two free-fall skydiving jumps, indoor surfing, a mini-city for kids, a digital media river on the ceiling—and, oh, some 200 shops.

The scale and scope of the project would be breathtaking in its own right. But what makes Xanadu extraordinary is the fact that it is emerging just as the American mall—that most quintessential of American institutions—is in its dying throes, if not already dead. Moribund malls have not gone unnoticed amongst industry analysts and Web sites like Deadmalls.com that feature photos of hundreds of now-abandoned sites. But what were once just worrying signs appear to have finally flat-lined. Last year was the first in half a century that a new indoor mall didn't open somewhere in the country—a precipitous decline since the mid-1990s when they rose at a rate of 140 a year, according to Georgia Tech professor Ellen Dunham-Jones, coauthor of the forthcoming book "Retrofitting Suburbia," which focuses on the decline of malls and other commercial strips. Today, nearly a fifth of the country's largest 2,000 regional malls are failing, she says, and according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, and a record 150,000 retail outlets, including such mall mainstays as the Gap and Foot Locker, will close this year. Xanadu, whose officials declined NEWSWEEK's requests for comment, has named just nine tenants for its 200 spaces.

So what's the cause of this malaise? After all, malls have been part of the national landscape for more than 50 years, spawning their own indigenous culture (mall rats), native cuisine (Cinnabon) and home-bred pop sensations from Tiffany to Timberlake. Prior diagnoses have pinned the mall's decline on retail cannibalization, the repopulation of cities and suburban gang problems. The current economic skid certainly isn't helping to fill shops and attract vendors.

"The mall at the end of town is dead. Amen," says Bill Talen, a.k.a. Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping, a secular movement dedicated to exorcising consumerism from everyday life. The reverend's tactics may be unusual—he's been known to leap on shop counters in order to "exorcise" cash registers—but his message of modest spending is increasingly mainstream. This month's Buy Nothing Day—an annual holiday from shopping sponsored by Adbusters magazine (it's the day after Thanksgiving)—is expecting to attract millions of participants, according to Kalle Lasn, the co-creator of the event that is now in its 16th year. His magazine, meanwhile, has grown from a local Vancouver zine to a $9 international glossy that's mainstream enough for Whole Foods supermarkets, and it has more than 100,000 paid subscribers.

Just as people are flying from malls, many are landing at a series of offbeat, alternative trading posts. The Salvation Army has seen sales jump 15 percent at some locations, while The Freecycle Network, a clearing house for second-hand goods has grown from 40 people to around 6 million since its founding in 2003. Each day, the group says, it keeps 500 tons of stuff out of landfills and in use. Another second-hand movement, known as The Compact, where members commit to buying nothing new for an entire year (underwear excluded), has grown from 10 friends to 10,000 members since 2004. Even those who are still buying new are viewing shopping through a changed lens: almost 40 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 30 prefer to use brands that are "socially conscious"—environmentally safe and produced through fair labor—according to research by Alloy Media and Marketing, a youth-focused ad agency.

"It's about manners," explains Donna Daniels, a former Duke University anthropologist now at Iconoculture, the retail consultancy. For years, she and her colleagues have been tracking the rise of what they call the "socially frugal" consumer class—people who buy less to escape attention and respect the constraints of others rather than because they have a cash-flow problem. Other experts, including pollster John Zogby, point to a "great transition" in the needs and expectations of average Americans, particularly those under the age of 30. In his recent book, "The Way We'll Be," Zogby argues that the same people who might well have become mall rats just a few years ago are learning to "make do with less and find a subdued peace in the process."

To survive this new age of austerity, many malls are trying to recast themselves as centers of thrift—hyping low-cost retailers if they have them and trying to add them if they don't. And it's about time, says Stuart Ewen, a City University of New York media professor who studies the social roots of consumer culture. He sees the 20th century as a "100-year barbeque" of resource-burning in an otherwise largely unbroken history of sustainable and thrifty living. "The word consumption used to be a pejorative, meaning death, destruction and waste," he says—now "more and more people are aware of that."

The consumerist backlash has become so mainstream that it's even popping up in politics, business and big-screen entertainment. John McCain and Barack Obama both talked frankly during their presidential campaigns about the need for Americans to dial back their spending habits, borrow less and save more, while Disney's best chance for an Academy Award nomination this year is "Wall-E," a film about robot love on a planet left sterile by human wastefulness. Marketers, ever sensitive to new opportunities to name a demographic, have done just that; many now see a group on the fringe of the "green" environmental movement they call "dark greens" and "very dark greens.

Developers, too, are adjusting to the times. They're trying to win back reluctant shoppers with "life-style centers," retail hubs that boast residential apartments, parks and promenades—the better to blend shopping seamlessly into everyday living. Such structures are going up faster than ever, with 37 new lifestyle centers—almost 40 percent of the form's total square footage built in the last decade—going up last year,according to Portfolio and Property Research, a Boston-based retail consultancy. One such break from the fashion-and-food-court formula cropped up this past summer in southern California, where a development called The Americana at Brand looks more like a movie set than a $400 million outdoor mall. The un-mall is laid out to resemble a small town, with a trolley car, chemist and car-free streets that resemble the quaintest quarters of New Orleans or Boston.

All of which makes the overt branding and commercialism of Xanadu stand out—for all the wrong reasons. The mega-mall has drawn fire from an unusually large and strange set of bedfellows: the Sierra Club, which sued to save environmentally protected wetlands; the Federal Aviation Administration, which has complained that the 287-foot Ferris wheel might disturb planes landing at nearby Teterboro airport; and former New Jersey governor Richard Codey, who has called it's design "yucky-looking." More recently, according to a person familiar with the matter, Xanadu's architects at the Rockwell Group have stopped returning the developer's calls and may remove their name from the structure, citing aesthetic concerns. Not that Xanadu entirely lacks believers. Its own personal Kubla Khan, developer Larry Siegel, has staked his career to the deal, while Pepsi has sufficient faith in the venture that it has bought the naming rights to the Ferris wheel (now the "Pepsi Globe") for a reported $100 million.

Still, with a move towards a quieter, more retrained way of life, New Jersey's Xanadu may yet find its dreams of leisure and retail success are as fantastical as the mythical world for which it was named.

Accountability and transparency: Get used to it

A bit of a continuation of the previous post: Blogger Fred Keller - he of the tax pledge signed by both mayoral candidates in the recent election - is taking the current common council to task over observations made here and in other local blogs - - and spelled out fairly explicitly at Metro Milwaukee Today - - concerning certain inequities in how the city of Franklin treats zoning violations and certain developers. He's awaiting answers.

And, of course, no answer is a pretty clear answer in and of itself.

The old "roll-your-eyes-at-the-naive-citizens" move isn't gonna cut it anymore.

Anonymous commenter chucks rocks at Franklin pro-developer politics

Strong words from anonymous commenter "Unfettered Candor" at Greg Kowalski's Metro Milwaukee Today: 

Devoid of moral fiber and honest representation of the community at large, members of the Plan Commission, Zoning Board, and Common Council gut-swallowed the hook of [developer Mark] Carstensen's campaign appealing siren song and ominous pressures. They totally ignored the pleas of the homeowners in Wyndham Ridge subdivision across the street from the ugly sprawl at thee intersection of Hwy. 100 and Drexel Ave. Before these people constructed their homes, they were cautious and inquired of the City if the area across from them would remain zoned for residential development only. They were passionately assured that they would never have to worry about that.

Enter the ogres to change all of that.

The influence of self-absorbed Mayor Tom Taylor, who needed a monument for himself, made it easy for the swaggering Carstensen to ramrod his will down the throats of Franklin taxpayers.

To Carstensen, Franklin is just some convenient land that is expendable so he can continue to add more fat to his bulging wallet. And to Taylor, Carstensen's campaign contributions help him to continue his flimflam operations in Franklin government.

"Devoid of moral fiber." "Ogres." "Swaggering." "Flimflam." Yeouch. Much more at Metro Milwaukee Today.

I await "Unfettered's" bullet points and documentation!

Funny letters to the editor: "Walker's transit plan makes good sense"

With all due sympathy for the circumstances of George Torres's exit from Franklin's Plan Commission (illness forced him to resign), a letter like the one he wrote to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel doesn't make me want to lead a rally for his return:

Walker's transit plan makes good sense

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker supports a strong transit system. He told the Milwaukee County Transit System to submit a balanced budget for 2009 that did not cut routes or raise fees. The good news is that transit officials met that challenge.

Looking ahead, Walker has a plan to provide a long-term funding source for the transit system by pursuing a plan at our airport that is similar to the plan being approved by Chicago for Midway Airport. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley already has received $1.8 billion for the Skyway toll bridge and is anticipating

$3 billion for Midway through a long-term lease. Scott Walker is also seeking to use all of the $91.5 million in federal aid to improve and upgrade the bus system through Bus Rapid Transit. Mayor Tom Barrett's plan for a streetcar system in a three-mile radius of downtown Milwaukee would cut $3 million in state and federal aid from the bus system. BRT is the better plan for the future.

George A. Torres
Milwaukee County, Director of Transportation & Public Works
Milwaukee

In other news: Amy Winehouse's lifestyle should serve as a template for all others.

Readers of this blog may recall the name; George Torres was the sitting plan commissioner who felt comfortable writing a letter dated 1/2/07 to WISDOT in support of developer Mark Carstensen's Shoppes at Wyndham Village strip mall before seeing any definitive plans and before Carstensen's development had appeared before him in his role as plan commissioner - - a role in which Torres would and should be expected to show no positive predisposition toward a project that has not yet demonstrated compliance to the city's requirements.

Download TorresLetter.pdf

An especially cuddly passage from Torres' letter:

Mr. Carstensen has also proven to be committed to ensuring his developments meet all State and local requirements. He remains open and receptive to ideas and suggestions that must be met in order to allow his projects to move ahead.

Really?

You gotta hand it to Mark Carstensen, though. After hoodwinking both the the city of Franklin and a family into a situation where there is now a single family residence built right behind Target in "Franklin's City Civic Center District" (!!!), he had the brass coconuts to actually mention the debacle from the podium at the Sendik's opening! 

It's been almost a week and my mind is still reeling from some of the things I heard from that podium; more later ...

Shoppes at Wyndham Village: On-site mosquito hatchery has issues; developer "reimbursed" nonetheless

Sendik's (Wyndham) Grand Opening, originally uploaded by johnruexp.

Item 4 on the 7/8/08 Common Council agenda: "Reimburse the Shoppes at Wyndham Village for the City’s share of the cost of the storm water management facilities for the reconstruction of W. Drexel Avenue from W. Loomis Road (STH 36) to S. Lovers Lane Road (STH 100)."

The council voted to "reimburse" Shoppes at Wyndham Village (Carstensen Development) $98,000, their share of creating an up-to-standards stormwater basin engineered to handle, hopefully, what the previous wetlands used to take care of. Alderman Wilhelm was the sole "no" vote.

Why vote no?

I wonder if anyone at the Sendik's grand opening yesterday wandered over to the east side of the store - - where the 200 year-old trees used to be.

What's wrong with this picture? Evidently, NOTHING, because Tuesday night the City of Franklin Common Council voted to immediately "reimburse" Carstensen Development $98,000 for what is at present a messed up, steep-grade, kid-eating (fence, anyone?), bank-eroding stormwater basin.

Did they fulfill the landscaping requirement? Look closely on the middle left side of the photo. Those two dead trees evidently represent the landscaping efforts to date.

Is it engineered correctly? The caved-in edges show you what happens when there aren't root systems and connective wetlands in place during torrential rain events like what we saw last month. If you've ever visited or seen pictures of the Grand Canyon (or, for that matter, my basement), you know that water goes where it wants to go and will make a path if one is not provided.

But the money was paid, even though it is obvious to the naked eye that this basin has issues that have yet to be addressed by Carstensen Development. Will they address those issues now that they have been paid, in effect, "on trust."? Let's watch closely.

In the meantime, ponder the implications  - - and cost savings - - of a thoughtful site plan that would have embraced the natural conditions on the site rather than try to wrestle them into submission.

In other news, the position of City Development Director will not be immediately filled because the city cannot afford the $83,137 salary.

Sendik's (Shoppes at Wyndham Village) Grand Opening

Sendik's (Wyndham) Grand Opening, originally uploaded by johnruexp.

Great weather. Intriguing speeches (that's Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker up there saying that Franklin is "lucky" to have the most pro-development mayor and common council in the state of Wisconsin) that I'll comment on tomorrow. Click the photo above to see a whole series.

Honestly, I was just checking the Star Wars trading cards I have stored there

Fountains of Franklin has a problem; the land it owns is bisected by a storage facility, and the owners will not sell (even as the city of Franklin applies pressure). FofF can't really do much in terms of a unified commercial space until they get the owners of the storage facility to sell them the land that effectively splits their developable property. You can't get from one section to the other without going back out on Rawson (though that "solution" would be par for the course in Franklin).

Wouldn't it be funny if the developers of Fountains of Franklin found out that rival developer Mark Carstensen - -  whose not-yet-ready-for-prime-time Target-Sendik's strip mall has a ribbon cutting scheduled for tomorrow - - was visiting the owner of that storage facility?

Greg Kowalski has the damning photo posted at Metro Milwaukee Today: Development drama in Franklin?

(A Cadillac Escalade - that's just perfect.)

Shoppes at Wyndham Village/Temple of Target scheduled to open. Anticipated asphalt temperature at ribbon cutting: 112 degrees

The temple of Target, originally uploaded by johnruexp.

I imagine we'll soon see a big gong installed on top of this monstrosity so the native inhabitants (some sort of parking lot cult) can summon King Kong.

We get what we deserve.

Ribbon cutting for the Shoppes is July 7th. Target opens on July 24. Whether human sacrifice is scheduled for either event has not yet been announced.

UPDATE: For a look at yet another local monstrosity proposed by a different developer, be sure to visit Metro Milwaukee Today.

They really have our number, don't they?

Has Fountains of Franklin peed on local blogger's lawn?

ABOVE: A recent picture of the Fountains of Franklin site. Or an old one - - it doesn't really matter, as nothing has changed.

How does one begin to dissect the folly of the latest manifestation of Republican senate aide Kevin Fischer’s fixation with the baby-step progress of Fountains of Franklin?

True - nothing is going on over there. I've had a little fun at Fountains' expense as well; there's no great glory in tagging a slow-moving beast, however. But Mr. Fischer seems deeply, personally offended by the lack of earth-moving equipment on the site. He is asking the city of Franklin for no less than “an analysis of the monthly lost tax revenue to the city of Franklin caused by the continued dormant site at 56th and Rawson. How much tax revenue is it costing the city of Franklin each and every month that site fails to operate with open businesses?”

He equates this request, you see, with the conjecture that Alderman Sohns' disastrous grandstand play wherein he displayed property values and taxes for Franklin bloggers was prepared by a city employee. Therefor, thinks Mr. Fischer, this same employee can run some numbers for him as well.

This is not a matter of retrieving numbers from a database, however. Evidently Mr. Fischer imagines an Excel spreadsheet sort of thing that the city of Franklin can fire up on their Dell computers (because I just know they don’t have Macs at city hall) and spit out a neat and tidy number that somehow perfectly conjectures not only what kind of businesses would be operating in Fountains of Franklin, but exactly how much revenue they are taking in per month: “By gar - - that idle land is costing us $7,267.54 per day, and $7,976.21 on double-coupon days! Let’s get a Walgreens planted, stat!”

The answer, perhaps, is an evening's session on the computer game SimCity. Punch in some data, do some terraforming, get rid of pesky plan commission input and UDI nonsense, add permanent tax cuts - DONE. Here's what Fountains of Franklin should look like in, say, 2010:

Will you just LOOK at the tax revenue we're losing as Fountains stands idle! No wonder Mr. Fischer is typing with such righteous ferver and purpose! Compare to the "before" photo:

Thank goodness for Mr. Fischer's vigilance, born as it is out nothing more than a pure and overwhelming concern for his community.

(Pause as laughter subsides....)

Fortunately, since "just a concerned citizen" Mr. Fischer has begrudgingly emerged from stealth mode (we are now told in his blog bio - - though not in print - - that he is an employee of state senator Mary Lazich, but only after I admonished the concealment) readers can fairly easily supply context. His employer has received (and undoubtedly hopes to continue to receive) financial contributions from Mark Carstensen, the developer of the troubled, no-announced-tenants Target-Shoppes at Wyndham Village (that's the one I fixate on, but I wear my bias on my sleeve), which is a direct competitor of what is planned for Fountains of Franklin. Nothing wrong with that, but smart businessmen don't lay out dough without expecting results. For her part, Senator Lazich has delivered, writing in support of Carstensen’s development sight unseen. She's a little inaccurate, however, in her effusive 1/6/07 letter to Secretary Frank Bussalacchi of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation:

I am pleased to add my support for the project to the unanimous support off [sic] the City of Franklin Plan Commission and Common Council.

Not unanimous. Plan Commissioner Kevin Haley voted against the development's crummy site plan - - hence, I submit, his momentary (more on that later) ouster from the commission.

So, bad for Fountains of Franklin is good for Carstensen and Shoppes at Wyndham Village. You don't think he'd like the tenants that are talking to Fountains to reconsider and come over to the currently Shoppes-less Shoppes at Wyndham Village? (How's this for a sales pitch: "Hey, Azana Spa - wouldn't you love to be located in the Target parking lot? it's, uh, really warm in the Summer!")

So, here's an idea: Plant seeds of doubt in the competing development. The only question is: Do Mr. Fischer’s marching orders come via fax, email, or over the phone? Bluetooth receiver in his ear? Bike messenger?

On the other side of the "methinks he protests too much" continuum is Fountains of Franklin's de facto champion, Greg Kowalski. His reaction to Mr. Fischer's post is virtually a Fountains press release. Having met with Fountains developer Dave Hintzman and apparently made privy to some Top Secret Information, Mr. Kowalski appears to have embraced the project and takes criticism of it somewhat personally. 

Who said municipal planning has to be dull?