In research for the Southwicks, this editorial turned up. On the forthcoming Capitol Shopping Center, itself now mostly demolished for the Red Lot, the editorial hits a number of themes still very relevant today, including an unexpected one.
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| October 14th, 1947 |
The editorial:
New Shopping Centers
Construction of a new shopping center at Capital and Center streets has occasioned considerable discussion not only because it "kiti-corners" the reserved capital grounds extension but because it may injure the old established business district. Nevertheless, this post-war track to the suburbs is a trend of the times and is happening all over the country especially in the larger cities.
Business Week in its current issue contains an article on the "Department Stores Hurrying to Suburbs," which while called "decentralization" or "expansion," is styled an attempt to find a solution for some of the problems that are facing big retailers, principally traffic congestion and auto parking now almost impossible in the largest cities. The new branches call for large parking spaces adjacent to the buildings and by bringing the store to the customer increasing the shopping trips. The significance is thus described:
"To downtown real estate owners and merchants, and to the city tax collector, it is a warning: Take quick steps to make downtown shopping more convenient, or else watch downtown sales and property values dwindle.
"For suburbanites there is a clear course, too: See to it that business section development is in tune with present and future traffic conditions so that the neighborhood doesn't get into the same snarl as the downtown area."
Not all of these attempts to create new business centers have been successful, especially in the smaller cities, since the high cost of pre-war construction has increased rentals, and usually the new projected centers have scared the property owners of the established business districts to organized efforts to provide parking spaces, such as block clearance for off street parking. Many cities have adopted building specifications compelling new buildings to include basement or adjoining property parking as a requisite for construction.
The projectors of the Salem project assert that they were driven out of the city center by the exorbitant prices asked for realty, or the refusal of property owners to either sell or lease or replace ancient dwellings with modern business structures. Property owners who expect to get rich by unearned increment and raising prices because of adjacent improvements are forcing this decentralization to their own ultimate loss by by-passing and shrinking values.
The Salem long range planning commission has given the subject of auto parking problems thorough study and made constructive suggestions a warning for action that should not pass unheeded.
Its frame is very autoist. It doesn't talk about any downtown neighborhood or residences, and instead talks about traffic, parking, and visits to downtown principally as "shopping trips." It's ok with "block clearance for off street parking" and parking mandates. Uses must be separate!
It also talks about flight from downtown and the center to the edges, which we are seeing again on the new commercial development just outside of Kuebler/Cordon near I-5.
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| New York Public Library |
But very interestingly, it invokes getting "rich by unearned increment." That's Georgist! Did the papers here ever argue for a land value tax? They certainly talked about "single taxers" a generation and more earlier, but I don't remember them doing so very sympathetically, and maybe there is more to say some time about the local popularity of a land value tax. Instead the theme they rang was the "confiscatory" nature of a single tax. There's more to look into here!
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| "Confiscating" - October 26th, 1912 |
We would today also talk more positively about the value of "ancient buildings." It is the general area of the Downtown Historic District that is doing better than the area of modern business big box structures. Jane Jacobs argued not even 15 years after the editorial for "old buildings" and "rundown old buildings," though we still see the rundown type as blight.
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| Jane Jacobs valued "rundown old buildings" |
Probably we'll return again to the editorial another time in discussions of downtown development or of our City revenue problem.
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