StreetsOfOmaha wrote:Big E wrote:1) Break the infatuation with surface parking. This is an absolute must. Whatever incentives (carrot or stick) the city has to use to get active uses on these surface lots is an absolute necessity.
2) Require - as in, make it a law, not a design suggestion - that all future development downtown be on a pedestrian scale (where applicable), with active street level use from morning to night, 7 days a week.
3) Affordable one bedroom housing for purchase. I absolutely refuse to believe that decent condos in the 400-700 sqft and $100,000 range can't be built downtown. (Hopefully the economy will make everyone realize that not everyone gets granite countertops and diamond toilets as standard furnishings.)
4) Street cars. Downtown, Midtown, South Omaha, zoo, UNO, Dundee, and the airport need to be connected. As in, like, right now. And it needs to be available during work and play time.
What blows my mind in all of this, is that all you have to do to figure out what works is go stand on the corner of 11th and Howard and just watch. Its no coincidence that the Old Market is one of the largest tourist draws in the state.
Ask the question "What is going on in the Old Market that isn't going on everywhere else?" and go from there.
Why steering a city is so |expletive| difficult here is beyond me.
Here |expletive| here!
And I would add that for every certain number of square feet of purely commercial (i.e. Class A office) or residential space built DIRECTLY along the riverfront, there be a requirement that a certain percentage match of feet of retail/dining/entertainment space be concurrently created and available for lease. And not just a loose suggestion, but an enforceable planning commission policy.
Presently, along the riverfront itself, we have thousands of feet of office and residential, and we have precisely ONE place where people can go dining, drinking, and your basic nightlife fun & frolic.
There is more than enough space in the CBD that there can be large sections of it that virtually roll up the sidewalks at 5:00PM every day, and other sections of it that are nearer to our seemingly collective ideal of full-service, 24/7 type areas. But there's only a very limited, and apparently tightly concentrated, amount of usable riverfront property and it's being rapidly consumed by M-F/9-5 entities. The riverfront should be alive and kicking 24/7/365.
And for the record, I am not at all suggesting that the entire riverfront should be literally teeming with non-stop nightlife. But certainly there needs to be something more than what we have now. Enlivening the riverfront would be a move in the right direction for ALL of downtown. It needs to be planned quickly, before it's too late and the entire developable stretch is gobbled up.
:;): :;): those parking lots at 11th and Harney, they need to make that a 4 way stop!