The killer crew at Smart City Consulting delivers a broadside here about what "lifestyle centers" are doing to downtowns all over the USA. Here's a tidbit:
Lifestyle centers are simply the latest incarnation of shopping malls cleverly masquerading as public town centers or public main streets. In fact, many developers incorporate the name “town center” or “village” into the development’s name and brand. They offer visitors shopping, dining and entertainment opportunities that are often marketed as urban, unique, historic and even European-style shopping experiences. The truth is that these centers are solely created to attract national chain stores and restaurants such as the Pottery Barn, Ann Taylor Loft and California Pizza Kitchen, anchor retailers that would better serve the community if located in downtowns or town centers.
They're talking about potentially turning the Highland Strip, five blocks from my house, into a "lifestyle center". Great, just what we need in the 'hood, a mall-like atmosphere. I'd rather have the Highland Street Church of Christ myself, and I'm not even Christian. It's a more stable part of the community, though.
4 comments:
I bet you'll like it. We'll be seeing you at Mike Fink's Alehouse, sipping sipping a Keelboat Kolsch.
Excuse this OT comment, but you're the only person I know who's actually active in Democratic politics around here, and you don't seem to have your email posted here or on your profile page....
Last night, coming home from meeting a friend for dinner in Bartlett, I found myself on Sam Cooper, East Parkway, and Union Ave. following a red SUV with "www.kurita2006.com" in big white letters on the back window, an "HOORAH! It's an Army thing" sticker on the bumper, and a TN Senate license plate, number 22.
Was I following Roz herself all that way (it being her car would be consistent with the sticker--Ft. Campbell being part of her constituency--the URL and the TN Senate plate)?
If it was, I regret I wasn't able to pull up alongside, honk and give her a big thumb's up.
Curley already ruined the strip with his narrow-minded ways. I was concieved on the holy Highland Strip, so I daresay there is no one in ths city who loves it more than me, but with that having been said, garbage like this is just par for the course to my mind.
To me, the strip died in 1998 when J.D. removed the outside bench seat from CK's Coffee Shop. The dumbshits who are in charge of what happens to the Highland Strip are so interested in money that they squash anything that might actually make them filthy rich. Every scene I have seen on the Strip died the death because the jackass in charge had no idea what to do with the energy of that place.
As a lifelong denzien of the Highland Strip, I can say with authority that it is not a friendly place to strangers. For that reason alone, the managers of the Strip continually defeat their own purposes, because they have no idea what that place is really all about. Only the people at Trilogy and Whatever understand the energy of the strip, and even that statement is only a half-truth. I'll leave it up to those in the know to figure out which half I refer to.
The future of the Highland Strip belongs only to the people who call it home, because as far as I can tell, the owners are all destined to go out of business sooner or later. This latest incarnation of canned bullshit is only going to solidify the Strip's well-earned reputation as a sketchy place to hang out.
It was bad enough when the DEA was posted on the roof of the Highland Cue. As if anyone is going to chill where there are corporate rent-a-cops enforcing a profit, making it impossible to relax.
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