Filling In: Monroe Ave

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 February 21, 2013 and can be found here.

     The following is a guest post submitted by       Matthew Denker      .
      Submit your story today      .

Last week RocSubway learned that developer Thomas Masaschi is converting the old Ted Cohen's Office Furniture store into three upscale penthouses, lofts and retail space on the first floor. You know     the place

; behind the Hess gas station on Monroe Ave. So we thought, for this week's edition of "Filling In," why not look at Monroe Ave, and how we could make one of Rochester's most walkable strips even better! We'll focus on a few small changes that could be implemented quickly, and then a few bigger ideas for the corridor going forward...

   Starting from the west at Union Street and moving east, parking lots like     this one

next to Dac Hoa should be concealed from the street using artful sculpture or scrims like shown above.

   Next, unnecessary driveways off of Monroe--such as     this one

into the Brueggers parking lot and the one on the other side of the street for Autozone--should be removed where ever possible.

   Another idea for the Monroe/Goodman intersection would be the addition of a     Barnes Dance

. A Barnes Dance crossing, or pedestrian scramble, stops vehicular traffic in all directions and allows for diagonal crossings. There are attractions at all four corners here, and because of the heavy vehicular traffic on both Goodman and Monroe (and turns between the two), the use of a Barnes Dance would greatly ease pedestrian crossing.

The final small change would be the addition of a pedestrian crossing at     Sumner Park

. Many dangerous crossings happen here, and a marked crossing here would help. Possibly even adjusting the traffic light at Oxford, so that eastbound traffic stops at Sumner Park and westbound traffic stops at Oxford. This would help immensely.

   For a few much larger and forward-looking ideas, consider the following short list:

1. Demolish the      Dunkin Donuts and Arbys

and build commercial space that fronts the street.

1. Convert the south face of the      garage at Averill

to apartments.

1. Demolish      McDonalds and 7-eleven

and replace with a large apartment building with commercial on the ground floor.

1. Eliminate the      gas station at the corner of Amherst

in favor of a mixed use development.

1. Develop the      Church parking lot at the corner of Rutgers

. Flip the      commercial space next to Pizza Hut

so the parking is in the back and the store fronts face the street. And eliminate the      gas station

at this corner.

Next week, we'll look at a couple of proposed developments in Rochester and consider why they should be built (even if the neighbors are against them), but how they could be significantly better than proposed.

* * *

About Matthew Denker:

Matthew Denker is a Project Director by day and a fantasy real estate tycoon by night. He has a deep interest in Rochester, NY, as well as the subjects of new urbanism, walkability, mass transit, and land use. Going forward he hopes to combine all of those things to make Rochester a city competitive not only with other small, successful cities, such as Portland and Minneapolis, but even better by leveraging its easy access to the world-class cities of Toronto and New York.

*Thanks to Cory Tinsley for the great detective work on Thomas Masaschi and the Ted Cohen's development!