Published December 2001

Lynnwood’s downtown proposal mirrors
‘next era’ in retail

By Bryan Corliss
Herald Economy Writer

Lynnwood’s proposed downtown center will be on the cutting edge of a new movement in American retailing, design consultant Robert Gibbs said.

It also will be a lot of work, he told a joint meeting of the South Snohomish County and Everett Area chambers of commerce Nov. 14.

“Everything you’re doing is breaking the modern suburban rules,” he said. “It’s going to be rough. Everything is going to be uphill.”

Gibbs is an advocate of a new trend in retail development — town centers. It’s a back-to-the-future movement that rejects under-one-roof malls to emphasize street-front shops and sidewalk pedestrian traffic clustered around a town square or other public place.

The mall dominated late 20th-century retail, he said. “The next era is going to be the town center.”

Town centers are more conducive to modern lifestyles, Gibbs said. Aging baby boomers are “empty nesting.” With their children gone, they’re selling their suburban ranch homes and moving into town.

And with lifestyles accelerating, fewer people have time to stroll the mall for a leisurely afternoon of consumer consumption, he said. They’d rather pull up in front of one store to shop and go quickly.

Town centers, with a mix of housing and small shops, meet those demands, Gibbs said.

About 50 town centers have been completed nationwide, and as many as 1,000 will be designed and built within the next 10 years, he predicted.

They harken back to the kind of retail development that was big in America’s small towns prior to the Depression, Gibbs said: street-level shops and upper-story apartments clustered around an open space. Instead of big boxes plopped in the middle of bigger parking lots, the store designs emphasize storefronts on sidewalks and on-street parking.

You have to have windows for people to look into, he said.

But a town center is more than just shopping, Gibbs said. It also includes public space, “somewhere you can sit and take a nap.” Civic buildings, like arts centers, also are good.

Yet, town centers rely on some of the same concepts as modern megamalls, he said. Town centers, like malls, need to be in high-traffic locations. They also need anchor tenants, just like a mall, and spaces for smaller stores and specialty shops.

It will take some changes to make one work in Lynnwood, Gibbs said. For example, such centers rely on both heavy traffic and on-street parking, something most traffic designers don’t like to mix.

But Lynnwood has a lot of potential, he said. “There aren’t a lot of small towns for you to compete with.”

The town center wouldn’t kill Alderwood Mall, he said. In fact, it likely would complement it, as well as help draw in more customers.

A Lynnwood town center could draw shoppers from as far as 150 miles away, he predicted. “You’re at the edge of the world. Anyone living beyond you is going to have to come in to shop.”

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