"I think what separates CityScape from Arizona Center is that when you do
take the wrapping paper off and our tenants are open, people will really see an
engaged street front," Moloznik said. "If you want to have retail on this site,
it has to be facing the street."
With all due respect, what in the world is he talking about? Anyone with two eyes can see that CityScape mostly turns its back to the street. In that regard, at best the development is a marginal improvement on the Arizona Center.
Working counter-clockwise from the west side of CityScape's primary retail block at Central Avenue and Washington Street, the west side features an entry to the parking garage, a teeny little auxiliary door for Five Guys, and a back door for CVS at the southwest corner.
The south side is more of the same-- from west to east you have the CVS back door, a blank wall with some measly posters and windows, another parking garage entrance, and on the east side an entry for Oakville Grocery.
The east side is open as you look across the concrete jungle that a very few people still call "Patriot's Park" to the true front doors of CVS and Lucky Strike (recessed far away from the street in true suburban fashion).
And the north side features a secondary building that has no entrances facing the street.
I'm sorry, but a couple token windows and back doors do not "engage" the street. A walk down the street of virtually any major urban center in the world would illustrate the difference. Either RED is being disingenuous or, more likely, this is more proof that they're suburban developers that simply didn't have a clue about building an urban structure.
3 comments:
I pass CityScape almost every work day on the train. On the eastbound train, I see the west and south sides. On the westbound train, I see the north side. Over the past few months, I've watched with the hope that somehow I was missing some architectural detail that was going to be added later. Instead, the view has just gotten worse as the development has progressed. I see some promise in the mix of businesses lured to CityScape, but from an architectural point of view, it seems that we've learned nothing during the last 20 years about how to make big projects engage the street.
I have to agree with this... I remember as every development turned its back to the streets... Mercado, Arizona Center, Collier Center, and now CityScape.
There are a few things that are nice: non-timed activities like Lucky Strike are much needed in Phoenix - everything else is non-spontaneous and is planned around a concert time, a game time, etc., etc.
They've got to focus on residential housing, or every business there will start closing at 2pm due to lack of business.
Regarding the design of the place, it's about as close to having a Costco downtown as possible... just a hair above the architectural creativity of Wal-Mart. With downtown space so precious, a rooftop park would have been amazing... or at least a rooftop deck with landscaping so that people could have a unique and different place to congregate.
Overall, I'm happy something is coming downtown, restaurants/shops are opening, etc., etc. But I've lived down here for 20 years, and can tell everyone that all of our energy should be focused on one thing: more residents... and in this day and age that means apartments. We'll need a lot of it too...
It's a shame that the plan for apartments above the retail on the former Patriot's Park site was nixed. That could have been a saving grace for this project both architecturally and commercially.
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