It has been painful to watch, this slow deterioration of
downtown Rochester over the past
quarter-century. Many of us can still picture, vividly, MidtownPlaza filled with shops, Sibley’s decked
out for Christmas, Main Street
packed with shoppers.
All of that is long gone, and it’s not coming back. Some
will say the near-death of downtown was inevitable, the result of natural
market forces that occurred throughout the country. I think we could have
prevented it, should have prevented it. But no matter. What’s done is done.
The important thing is: what next? And slowly, I’m beginning
to believe there’s more than a moderate chance for a rebirth on Main
Street.
We’ve got yet another plan for downtown’s future, this one
produced by the Washington-based think tank known as the Urban Land Institute.
Previous plans — Vision 2000, Rochester 2010 — were set in motion by City
Hall. The ULI study, and the subsequent report, released earlier this month,
was sponsored by the Rochester Downtown Development Corporation and was
supported by city government, county government, and local corporations and
real-estate investors.
The significance: a wide variety of business and government
leaders were worried enough about the deterioration of the heart of downtown
— the Sibley’s-Midtown area — that they decided to look for advice.
Together.
Nobody thinks that reports by themselves lead to action. But
they can be a start, and RDDC president Heidi Zimmer-Meyer says this latest
report will serve as a “platform” for what comes next.
The ULI report recommends converting Sibley’s to housing,
tearing down part of MidtownPlaza
and replacing it with a performing-arts theater, a park, and more housing. It
recommends converting older office buildings north of the Renaissance Square
site into condos — and building still more housing north of Sibley’s.
In all, ULI panel members think downtown could support 5000
to 7000 new housing units.
Are they nuts? Don’t they realize that MonroeCounty — and the city in
particular — is losing population?
“They knew that before they came,” says Zimmer-Meyer. The
ULI experts also knew that the city and its suburbs are in competition with one
another for that shrinking population and for retail stores and offices.
But the ULI panel members think there’s a market for that
much new housing downtown. Not all at once. But over the next 10 years, yes.
And Zimmer-Meyer says she agrees.
“The re-urbanization movement, people moving into downtown,
is a national phenomenon,” she says.
Rochester has
missed out on a lot of national phenomena. But maybe we won’t miss out on this
one.
Among local developers, “there seems to be an appetite and a
belief” that there is a demand for housing downtown, says Zimmer-Meyer. There’s
a growing sense that there’s money to be made from it. “We have more
developers, more investors, more projects” going on right now, she says, “and
the ones hitting the market are being absorbed.”
Enthusiasm aside, everyone involved in the ULI project knows that getting that much new housing
won’t be easy. Developing Midtown and Sibley’s, in particular, will be enormous
challenges. They’re huge properties, and they’re privately owned, and Midtown
has asbestos problems. Government doesn’t have a lot of money to lure
developers into those kinds of projects.
Now, says Zimmer-Meyer, RDDC and others are taking the ULI
recommendations and are trying to put together a strategy to reshape and revive
downtown.
“It doesn’t mean that every single thing they recommended is
going to be a top priority,” she says. But one thing is clear. Housing will be
the driving force. There has to be enough housing to support retail.
The downtown of a decade from now won’t be the downtown of
the 1980’s. It’ll probably never be the site of a major department store again.
But 5000, 7000 housing units? Fourteen thousand new downtown residents? That would make a difference.
For years, we seemed to be fighting almost impossible odds
downtown. Now, for the first time in a long time, there’s a glimmer of hope.
And incidentally: if the ULI report’s promise is fulfilled,
somebody ought to pass out medals to the real heroes in this long, long story:
a quarter-century’s worth of city officials, to be sure. But also the less
visible heroes: the residents of the Grove Place neighborhood, the Little
Theatre owners, the club and bar and restaurant owners, downtown arts leaders,
the initial housing developers — all of the people who have kept the faith
and invested their own money in downtown all these years. Without them, hope
for downtown revival would have died long ago.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2006.
