Back in May of 1947, Salemites first learned about the proposal for a new shopping center on the edge of downtown. Developers had secured options to buy some 30 houses and were going before the Planning Commission for approval to rezone and build for an anchor Sears store, a grocery store, a drug store, and several other kinds of retail. (Morning, and afternoon papers.)
 |
| Looking from Capitol Street east-northeast-ish Center and Capitol at lower right March 30th, 1949 (and photo, March 28th, 1951) |
One of the concerns expressed both in news pieces and in editorials, was that the planning for the new Capitol of 1938 envisioned building restrictions 1500 feet north of Court Street and 500 feet east and west of Summer Street. They wanted to keep property values lower in case the State needed to buy more for more office buildings northwards, and they wanted no vulgar commercial activity to detract from the high-minded purpose of government:
[T]he state should wish to control development in the vicinity of this government headquarters so that the beauty and the dignity of the setting may be preserved and no values created that the public with have to pay in case further enlargement of the public grounds is desired.
A little later the American Institute of Architects protested the shopping center as they criticized "commercial encroachments on civic centers and park areas..."
 |
| "Encroachment" concerns September 18th, 1947 |
In retrospect, it's hardly obvious that the "encroachment" of a retail mall is any worse than the "encroachment" by the monoculture of government office buildings and parking lots. One of the houses demolished for the shopping center was associated with an early Governor, but of course many houses in "piety hill" had already been demolished for the State Library and shortly would be shortly for the Public Service/Department of Education building finished in 1949.
 |
| Former Gov. Chadwick House, demolished Salem Library Historic Photos |
There's a prior error. The whole idea of encroachment itself depends on notions or purity, of single use districts purified of contaminating or invading contrary uses. A person posted a humorous thread to our Strong Towns group illustrating the problem with sort-and-separate:
To explain zoning to my family, for holiday dinner I'm gonna ask to put salads on one table, drinks on another, sides on a third table and the main dish in the living room.
Two years later, planners for the State had absorbed the idea of the shopping center into the encroachments of the Capitol mall as it extended all the way to D Street. (You can see the shopping center below the final "a" in "AREA.")
 |
| November 19th, 1949 |
And as you can see from the image at top, the shopping center was conceived as facing Capitol Street, which was a "main street" and part of the State Highway system at that time. 12th Street was very minor.
 |
| Capitol Street in red, part of highway system, 1940 |
Later, the shopping center's "face" was turned around to east, to the parking lot areas. And that shift in orientation might be interesting to revisit in more detail.
The first store to open was - surprise! - a grocery store, a new Berg's Market. It had a soft opening in late February or March of 1949, and grand opening publicity the end of March. The store featured modern refrigeration, self-service cellophane wrapped meats, electric eyes for automatic door opening, and parking. Lots of parking. Both the morning and afternoon papers featured multi-page spreads on the store.
 |
| March 30th, 1949 |
This building was later remodeled into a bank and is now, like the former Sears building, a State office. It's another grocery store box that has proved useful.
The Sears opened in August of 1949 (morning and afternoon coverage). Other stores were planned to follow: Kress variety store, Owl Drug store, a salon, specialty women's apparel shop, dry cleaner, barber, and others.
 |
| View north from Center Street (also view south) Salem Library Historic Photos |
Sometimes when people talk about free parking downtown, they talk about needing to meet the competitive threat posed by Lancaster Mall's huge parking lot and commitment to free parking. But this shopping center was more immediate competition to downtown retailers. It had already lured the Sears business to relocate.
Here is Sears on the corner of High and State in 1939. (I believe it was at other sites downtown, also.)
 |
| Sears at High and State, 1939 Salem Library Historic Photos |
Not only was it a new business district, demolition for the State office buildings on the new Capitol Mall group, as well as demolition for the Capitol shopping center removed households that had shopped downtown and been the customer base for those businesses. It may have looked like more convenience, but it eroded support for downtown and forced people to live farther away.
One of the central theses of the blog here is that the ring of monoculture by which we surrounded downtown harmed it far more than any "lack" of free parking in downtown:
- The Civic Center
- Pringle Creek Urban Renewal Area (office and park areas)
- Willamette University
- Salem Hospital
- State Capitol, State office buildings, and parking lots
- The Capitol shopping center (absorbed later into the State office complex)
All those areas had houses and people living in them, who shopped downtown and who then had to relocate farther away from downtown, some voluntarily, some not. Increasingly they would have found other areas more convenient for shopping and errands.
Always when we talk about the health of downtown, and about the health of any neighborhood more generally, we should consider the costs of sort-and-separate land use, and the costs of our commitment to free parking. Above all, problems with downtown are the result of fewer people living nearby, not the result of an undersupply of free parking.
See also:
- On the ring of monoculture, see "Girdling Downtown: Institutional Growth and the Etiolaton of Business" (2011)
- Specifically on an urban renewal area, "Pringle Creek Urban Renewal District Nets Little over Inflation" (2012)
- With more on the rhetoric of invasion and encroachment in the newer context of historic districts, see "Defense against Developer Dark Arts: Historic Districts' Unpredictable Charm" (2016)
- On downtown housing, "Causes of Downtown Struggle: Insufficient Free Parking or Loss of Residences?" (2020)
- A little bit on piety hill, "Redevelopment of Holman Row on Court Street" (2021)
- At the paper in a 2015 history column, with a couple of nice images from the Mill's collection, "Capitol Shopping Center was a retail mecca."
- And Virginia Green's 2004 piece for Historic Marion, "The Children of Piety Hill." A slide deck with a close look at piety hill and its houses has disappeared, unfortunately.
No comments:
Post a Comment