“Brilliant.”
That’s
how Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown Development Corporation,
describes the preliminary design for the most controversial part of Renaissance
Square: the bus terminal.
Architect
Moshe Safdie unveiled his concept for Ren Square at a public
forum last week. And while this stage really is “concept,” not completed
design, there was major news: Safdie and his design team have scrapped the idea
of an underground terminal.
In
its stead, they proposed a street-level bus station, running east to west along
the project’s northern edge, about where Mortimer
Street is now. With the change, they not only
dealt with one of the biggest objections to Ren Square, but they
made substantial practical gains. They reduced the terminal’s size by about
100,000 square feet, saving about $30 million. And they made it much easier for
buses to navigate the terminal, cutting costs and emissions.
Ren Square will occupy a
large, crucial city block, bounded by Main Street on the south,
Clinton Avenue on the east,
what is now Mortimer Street on the north,
and St. Paul Street on the west. Safdie’s
concept is for a completely integrated complex, with MonroeCommunity
College’s downtown campus on the west, a
public concourse with retail stores in the center, a performing arts center on
the east, and the transit center behind them.
Most
structures in that area would be demolished for the Ren Square components,
but in Safdie’s plan three architecturally significant buildings — the GraniteBuilding on Main Street and the
Edwards and CoxBuildings on St. Paul — would
remain and could be incorporated into the MCC campus.
Safdie
has also addressed the concerns that had sent the bus station underground in
the first place: that noise and emissions would dampen enthusiasm for
redevelopment north of the project, particularly housing. Safdie has enclosed
the station, and he put a tree-lined park above part of it, one story up from
the street.
And
to address concerns that an enclosed terminal would be oppressively dark and
awash in the fumes of idling buses, Safdie and his designers added two more
features. A low arcing glass roof slices lengthwise through the park, letting
natural light into the terminal below. And glass walls separate a
climate-controlled waiting area from the buses themselves.
Still, while
the design solves some of the project’s problems, there are plenty of other
decisions to be grappled with. Most of those revolve in some way around the
effect Ren Square will have on
downtown. Predictably, its backers have played up the project’s potential
economic benefits, often in the rosiest of terms. Here’s a sample from the
project’s web site: “Creating a destination in our city center will bring
people from all over to downtown Rochester.”
But
the success of Ren Square hinges on
solving a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma. The novelty of a Safdie gem downtown
will almost certainly lure plenty of visitors once, but there’ll have to be
something — restaurants or retail, for instance — to keep them coming back.
Yet without a critical mass of patrons in place, it’ll be risky for businesses
to open there. And while market-rate housing is growing downtown, it’s growing
slowly.
At
the Wednesday forum where the designs were unveiled, RGRTA Chief Mark Aesch
suggested that current bus riders, an estimated 25,000 of whom transfer
downtown every weekday, might provide that critical mass at first. But their
presence hasn’t bolstered retail in the Main and Clinton area. One
reason, which no one seems to want to acknowledge, is that many RTS bus riders
simply won’t have enough disposable income to be attractive to many retailers.
Expecting the city’s working poor to underwrite downtown’s recovery seems a
losing proposition.
The
other two components represent possible solutions. The first is the expanded MonroeCommunity College downtown campus. MCC plans to offer
more courses in health care and technology in the new facility. And the number
of students will grow, says MCC President Thomas Flynn, from the current 2,000
or 3,000 to 5,000.
Ren Square’s performing
arts center would also draw people downtown, many of them willing and able to
spend money on dinner before a show or drinks afterward. It could help make
that area of downtown an evening destination.
But
of all the components, the performing arts center is most in limbo. It’s the least
fleshed out component in Safdie’s preliminary design. Even the number of
theaters is still up in the air. That’s at least in part because Safdie’s team
is awaiting the results of an Arts and Cultural Council study, says Renaissance
Square Project Manager Mark Ballerstein.
In
addition, little funding has been lined up yet for the arts center, and a
significant amount (about a third, says Ballerstein) will have to come from
private donors. And even a steady stream of events wouldn’t necessarily attract
enough people to support many spin-off businesses.
So
will adding theater-goers to the mix change things enough to spur development?
“No,
not alone,” says Heidi Zimmer-Meyer. The hope that Ren Square offers, she
says, is that the sum will be greater than the whole of its parts. A signature
piece of architecture downtown can’t magically conjure up crowds of
pedestrians, but the excitement and energy it brings to the area could attract
the mix of businesses that might.
In
fact, in many ways the success of Renaissance Square will be judged finally by
everything not directly related to
the project itself. The rubric will be what happens around it. Will it turn the
area around? Some of the early signs are encouraging. To begin with, there’s
the park that doubles as the bus station’s roof. That space engages the
buildings to the north of the site.
“That’s
critical,” says Zimmer-Meyer, particularly if those buildings are going to be
used for housing. “It’s now much more appealing” than in previous plans, she
says. Zimmer-Meyer likens the atmosphere created by placing the park near
potential housing to that of a large central courtyard surrounded by
apartments, an arrangement more typical of large, established urban areas.
Another Safdie
proposal with the potential for substantial impact outside of Ren Square: Restoring
two-way traffic to St. Paul Street and North
Clinton Avenue. For the project, that would
have the immediate effect of reducing driving distance for eastbound buses. (As
the traffic situation exists now, they’d have to make a loop of left turns to
enter and leave the facility).
But
making St. Paul and Clinton two-way could
also have even bigger — if somewhat less quantifiable — effects,
Zimmer-Meyer and City Councilmember Bill Pritchard say. Both are longtime
advocates of making many of downtown’s one-way streets two-way.
“It’ll
foster better neighborhood and community on St. Paul,” says
Pritchard. One reason, he says, is that it will slow traffic down. If downtown
is to be a neighborhood, “you’ve got to get rid of these mini-highways cutting
through it,” he says.
Slower
traffic would make the area seem more walkable and enhance what Pritchard
refers to as the “touchy-feely” elements of the streetscape, the perceptions
that pedestrians have.
“They
matter when you’re developing the neighborhood,” he says.
And
Zimmer-Meyer says changes prompted by Ren Square might spark
discussion about changing one-way streets to two elsewhere downtown.
“I’d
be disappointed if there isn’t more talk about it,” she says.
(Calls
to city traffic engineers — who’ve opposed such changes in the past —
weren’t immediately returned.)
Finally,
there’s the connection between Renaissance Square and other nearby points of
activity. More than once during his presentation last week, Safdie interrupted
himself to encourage the audience to push for such links. Connecting the
project to the river — just a block away — is vital for downtown, he said.
So is connecting it to whatever becomes of MidtownPlaza. Safdie’s
designs even included details like new tree plantings that suggest such
connections.
If
that vision comes about, the streetscape could be so transformed that visitors
will park their cars in the East End and walk
along Main Street through a
thriving downtown to the river, says Zimmer-Meyer.
“Right
now you wouldn’t do that,” she says, “but five years from now, I think that’ll
change.”
This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2005.
