Placeless places: More on "The Shoppes at Wyndham Ghost Town"

A follow-up to my post about contrasting sunny Sunday afternoons at Ferch's Malt Shoppe locations in two quite different environments. A comment was left by "Anon":

I was there on 8/3 with my family at 8 PM at night. Target looked like they were ready to close then, the Starbucks and Food Court were already closed, and it seemed like a ghost town in there. We went to Ferch's, and there was like 10 people in there when we started, and another 10 people came in while we were having our desserts.

I think you have to give it time. There's nothing there to attract people to that location yet. Huntington Learning Center's looked like they were finished with drywall, and Cousins and the haircut place were closed.

I remember when the Target in New Berlin was like a ghost town the first year or so as well. The same with the Target in Oak Creek. I'm happy that it's a Target, and not a Wal-Mart.

It might have been interesting to see the Greendale Ferch's at the time "Anon" describes above; Monday evening, still light out, perfect temperature -- the park right next door, a neighborhood in safe walking distance, etc. I don't imagine a "ghost town," do you?

And, yes, we can be relieved that Wal-Mart -- whose location on 27th Street is shabbily maintained at best -- is not there.

The point is, the interlocking conditions I described in my previous post contribute to a vibrant public space that is not subject to "spurts" of 10 people or so who arrive for a single purpose and then get back in their car and leave. There is nothing of use anywhere near the Shoppes at Wyndham Village's Ferch's; it's an imitation of a replica -- where the Greendale Ferch's is explicitly designed to evoke long-departed downtown "malt shops," it works because it is part of a network of pre-planned civic and commercial amenities that rise above the level of a single developer's desire to "do a deal." The Franklin Ferch's duplicates the decor, the menu, the signage, but ignores everything else that makes for a regular flow of people in and around their site.

It's a poor site plan, driven, evidently, by the rigid requirements of Target. That vast frontage of asphalt parking is nonnegotiable for a reason; Target (and most big boxes) manipulate their site plans to discourage relationships with other commercial buildings in proximity.

So, while the Shoppes at Wyndham Village's (apparently abandoned) website claims...

The layout has been thoughtfully planned to include outdoor seating areas featuring decorative benches, lighting and abundant pedestrian paths offering connections for ideal access to the stores. Imagine carrying out your shopping errands at your favorite retailers and being able to meet friends for coffee and lunch at Franklin’s finest shopping experience – The Shoppes at Wyndham Village.

... it is abundantly clear by a cursory glance at the site plan above that this is little more than a standard Target big box location with out-buildings; nothing will cross that red border up there, even though extending structures along Lover's Lane to nearly meet Target would have created a much more useful, interconnected space. 

Go there while the weather is perfect and sit on a "decorative bench" in the treeless, open expanse and see if you don't feel like asking yourself, as I did, "what am I doing here?" It's practically hostile space.

"Thoughtfully planned"? No, this is the sort of character-free development that used to pop up near highway interchanges and still do as part of "Edge City" developments, which are "placeless" concentrations of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional urban area in what had recently been a residential suburb or semi-rural community. Think Bluemound Road in Brookfield.

But this is right in the middle of Franklin, across the street from a subdivision full of McMansions. Wholly inappropriate to its surroundings because it was designed as though situated right off I-94.

I should also point out that when I looked in the windows of the outbuilding where the Sport Clipz "haircut place" sign is (see below), I saw an empty shell; there aren't even partitions delineating interior spaces. We're talking about frameworks and facades over dirt and gravel, not commercial spaces ready for occupancy.

Target will do just fine. But how do you generate more commercial growth when little or no care appears to be taken in creating a physical environment that is conducive to commerce and integrated into its surrounding community?

But we lose much more than commercial opportunities when we allow -- and even encourage -- development that is so ludicrously out of human scale. As Stacy Mitchell writes in her book, Big Box Swindle:

In the suburbs, life takes place in a series of fragmented, single-purpose zones -- home, office, shopping -- that stretch indefinitely toward the horizon, with no obvious geographic center or outer boundaries. This lack of well-defined community has a powerful negative influence on civic participation, according to Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam, as does the amount of time one spends in the car each day.

UPDATE: Greg Kowalski at Franklintoday.com speculates on possible new Shoppes at Wyndham Village tenants based on MidAmerica Real Estate's web site.They've updated their Wyndham Hills listing and PDF flier to replace Sendik's with Pick n' Save - could the other notations indicate actual pending tenant announcements?

Comments

[J. Strupp]

Two weeks ago I stopped by Cousins in the "shoppes" development on our way back from the library to grab some lunch with my kids.

70 degrees and sunny.

I took the kids out of the car seats, had lunch in Cousin's (no outside seating available), strapped the kids back into the car, drove across the development to Ferch's, unstrapped the kids again, bought some ice cream for my daughter and went on our way.

It's truly remarkable how much of a let down this development has become in a matter of a year.

[John Michlig]

Not to mention how different your afternoon would have been if the library, Cousin's, and Ferch's were all in walkable proximity to one another - - and how different the entire atmosphere would be.

Sad to think that our community interactions are based almost completely upon the desire of this or that developer to exploit an arbitrary patch of land that they'd acquired, regardless of where that land actually is in relationship other assets.

Placeless places.