This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published March 05, 2015 and can be found here.
You may remember an article I posted more than a year about new plans for an Aldi store in Irondequoit on Hudson Ave. At that time I suggested the building should front the street/sidewalk, instead of being set back behind the parking lot. I thought the result would have been a development that would be more accessible to people who might choose to walk in off the street.
My suggestion was met with all kinds of wisdom from the project architect who has since set me straight. I now understand why it is better community planning to put your buildings in the middle of parking lots...
For the people of Rochester who are currently facing a similar Aldi proposal in North Winton Village
I want to share some of these lessons I learned from the Aldi project in Irondequoit.
First, as Steve Cleason of APD Architects explains here
putting the building at the sidewalk does not improve pedestrian access. In "reality" making the parking lot as convenient as possible does. Cleason points out that "downtown areas" always clear out space to improve access to parking lots so this must be true. 1965 called and it says you need "numerous amounts of parking or retail cannot thrive."
Second, big parking lots create views of open space
and help improve line-of-sight for drivers so they can see the creek and wooded area behind the store. Because while we're waiting at the light on our way from Aldi to the Wegmans across the street, that bit of green space will be a nice stress reliever.
of moving all the buildings out of the way of the parking lot, is that now, all of the people who park there will shop at Aldi and then want to walk to all of the other establishments in the area. Looking at the aerial view in his presentation, this seems completely likely.
Any questions so far?
It's important to keep in mind, that any new development need only be walkable if there are already pedestrians
there currently. I mean why waste you're time worrying about "foot traffic" if you're building on an underdeveloped lot or a green field? That would be ridiculous, especially in a town of only 50,000.
And finally, as you can see
pedestrian access can be achieved simply by placing crosswalks and a bike rack in the middle of the parking lot. Throw in a few benches and you've created a nice "public gathering space" for the community.
Thank goodness the Irondequoit planning and zoning boards did not agree with my naive proposition, because clearly this Aldi is much more accessible with a parking lot in front of it.*
*Pedestrian access excludes December - March.
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Public Input Opportunity:
Steve Cleason and APD Architects are working on a similar Aldi store at North Winton and Blossom
. You can submit your thoughts on this project to the Zoning Board by emailing [email protected] .
