By Duo Dickinson
We all saw a year of extreme building off Exit 15 of I-95 in Norwalk, culminating last year in the SoNo Collection. The Collection is intended to be the answer to the overwhelming trend to digital shopping.
The jewel in the crown of this new-style “destination mall” is Nordstrom.
Then, after a few months of COVID-19 the Nordstrom mothership ominously closed more than 10 stores and let go 6,000 employees.
Times are changing.
The generational trend to online shopping is trying to be counterpointed by any number of attempts to recreate the “shopping experience.” The Norwalk effort was to put a pleasure palace of all-day experiences offered by all the elements around “The Collection” (no “mall” here!). Whether it was the Maritime Aquarium, the Lockwood-Matthews Mansion and the Norwalk River with Oyster Shell Park, this was not the sprawling parking lot-surrounded big box experience — the SoNo Collection is intended to be full destination distraction, not just retail therapy.
But in a world built in the second half of the 20th century that is fully dependent on cars and credit cards, all malls were stressed even before COVID-19. Jordan Grice of Hearst Connecticut Media interviewed Sacred Heart University’s professor Jose Mendoza, who declared that shopping malls will be retooled by “building the millennial playground.” But like every other aspect of post-COVID life, things will change beyond marketing.
Like so many others, the Danbury Fair Mall, filled its halls with comfortable seating, children’s play areas and places to sit and eat with a fully WiFiinfused interior. But more, the Westfield Trumbull Mall is fully retooling its essential reality as a classic “shopping mall” with “anchor tenants” and a great “shopping experience.” Last summer the mall integrated the SeaQuest Interactive Aquarium into its complex. Better than any Multiplex Movie House (especially in a pandemic), creating entertainment is the magic bullet of reincarnation for the Great American Shopping Mall.
But it might not be enough.
It is now a cliche to say that America is moving to a “walkable” way of living. As seen in Norwalk, Stamford and New Haven, living where you work, walking to eat dinner or buy groceries or see an exhibit or show has real value. No shopping mall as it exists can compete with that, nor can any office park. The isolated islands of
“experience” and workaday jobs are still almost always car-accessed.
In 2020, people have been forced to stay put, and drive less, even if there wasn’t a value in sustainably rejecting the carboncreating automobile. Presciently, the Trumbull mall has worked throughout the year to develop and get approval for the creation of housing on the site of the mall itself. When built, the newly approved housing development will give residents the ability to walk or ride a bike to the mall.
In August, Trumbull amended its zoning ordinance at the site of the mall to “create an environment that is comfortable and interesting to local residents and visitors as a place to live, play, shop, work and socialize.” This language that is used to create the new zoning district in Trumbull is almost the mantra of a “walkable” rethinking of the suburban world that has become an economic and social model in many cities and towns.
But shopping malls are not the only mid-20th century suburbancreated mall — the “business park” is also being rethought in the push to create a “walkable” world where work is in the neighborhood or your basement. As the post pandemic predictions of the “end of the corporate office” are now conventional wisdom, it’s a good thing to know that the isolated car-serviced corporate business park is being fully re-examined as well.
Blogger Kevin Zimmerman cites the desire of the national real estate development firm Caldwell Banker Richard Ellis to “fuel a wave of adaptive repurposing and reuse in Fairfield County ... the office-to multifamily movement is still gaining steam.”
In Westport, a 1980 42,000square-foot office building has been converted to 94 residential units at the 1177 Greens Farm development. Additionally, the former Save the Children building on Wilton Road is now 16 units of housing. Senior housing is recreating an office building on the office park-filled High Ridge Road in Stamford as well.
In 1926, real estate mogul Harold Samuel is credited with coining the Three Rules of Real Estate: “Location. Location. Location.” In areas of recent development, like Fairfield County, perfectly good buildings in central locations are a ripe target for redevelopment when needs change, whether in 1926 or today.
Office parks and retail mails were often dropped between the newly sprawling suburban developments of post-war suburbia in places like Fairfield County. As the world has grown to surround these places with other buildings, what was remote has become central. By making fully integrated places to “live, play, shop, work and socialize” cars are becoming less needed, and the dangerous densities of inner city living may just be mitigated.
Duo Dickinson is a Madison-based architect and writer.