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22 Planning May 1992. Strip Malls vs. City Streets Strip malls, or strip retail cen- ters, have proliferated in larger cities in the last 10 years. For the most part, city officials have welcomed the newcomers for the convenience they offer to residents and the taxes they yield to public coffers. But they also recognize definite prob- lems: inappropriate design, danger to pedestrians, increased traffic congestion, the displace- ment of locally owned small businesses. As in the suburbs, cities have used a variety of mechanisms to mitigate the negative effects of strip malls. Among them: corridor plans and overlay zones, streetscape design guide- lines, and neighborhood dis- tricts and plans. L.A.: visual quality In southern California, mini- i V c 1~ u P L P R malls became a developer's staple in the 1980s. Los Ange- lesCounty alone has more than 2,000 of these centers. Part of the reason for the boom was the large supply of corner lots that became available as cen- tral city gas stations closed. (Some 3,000, about half the total, closed between 1975 and 1990.) The gas station lots were generally too large for a single store, too small for an office building, but just right for a mini-mall. At the same time, the city had an influx of new residents seeking to open small businesses and franchises. For them, the newly built mini- mally-with up-to-date electri- cal, phone, and mechanical sys- tems-seemed a better bet than older retail space that would require upgrading. In 1987, the city enacted a moratorium on construction of new mini-malls until new stan- dardscould be enacted. A year Washington's Park and Shop is an early example of the corner mall. Its traditionally styled buildings, arranged along two sides of a parking lot, were recently restored after a long preservation battle. One alternative in the Chicago guidelines allows the single mall building to be replaced with several smaller structures, built to the property Line, with parhing at sides and rear. A N N A C T later, the city council enacted a new mini-shopping center ordinance, which was further revised in 1990. The ordinance focuses on improving the vi- sual quality of the centers. In most cases, it requires afive- foot-wide landscaped buffer along all street frontages and along the perimeters of all park- ing areas abutting residential areas. It also requires a deco- rative screening wall or hedge to separate parking areas from the sidewalk. The Los Angeles ordinance requires mini-malls to provide four parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of building area and five spaces per 1,000 square feet if the mall contains a res- taurant. Some developers have complained, charging that the requirement has had the ef- fect of chasing away health clubs and restaurants, which now often choose not to locate in mini-malls. gga G~ a a 0 E s U I N G I C E Chicago eyes the street Chicago's Department of Plan- ningand Development has also developed new design guide- lines for strip centers on sev- eraltypes ofcommercial streets. Some 200 such malls were built in the city during the 1980s, according to Tom Smith, di- rector of zoning policy. Smith notes that, although Chicago has some 500 miles of streets zoned for commercial uses- lots ofpotential for mini-malls- lotdepth isoften only 125 feet. That's where the city runs into a problem: It would like to maintain the street wall, but the shallow lots make it diffi- cult to get developers to con- sider placing the parking be- hind, where automobile access is limited, rather than in front of the mall buildings. Smith and other local plan- ners continue to question the appropriateness ofmini-malls- and their parking-for city