[+] Savvy Reuse Injects Vitality into Suburban Dead Zones

Counteracting urban decay with innovation and repurposing could be the key to renewal of ageing assets, according to research out of the United States. Professor June Williamson is chair of the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College of New York and co-authored the book Retrofitting Suburbia . She spoke to The Urban Developer ahead of her trip to Australia for the Urban Land Institute’s Australia conference early next year where she will present. Williamson says the problem in her native US with abandoned ageing assets is more pronounced across the country’s shopping centres, business parks and post-pandemic office towers. “A lot of the narrative is that cities are dynamic places that undergo regeneration and change and respond to the economy. And that suburban areas are kind of timeless and finished. To some degree I think we’re seeing the inverse of that,” she says. “Planning out years in advance about what would happen, and certainly in the US, it was always thinking about growth and sprawl and what would come next. “And I think the tide has really turned on the possibility of continuing that mindset indefinitely. “There’s an opportunity to revisit that and rethink a lot of that and meet housing needs cumulatively. If you put 50 units there and 100 over there all of a sudden you’re housing a lot more people, it’s not about putting big towers everywhere.” ▲ Professor Williamson says empty strip retail and big box format shops could be retrofit to make them fit for purpose in their communities. Williamson says that as assets reach the end of their cycle and asset owners realise all of their profit, there was an opportunity to revisit and reinvent these assets according to what is needed in the community and suburb. “We need to turn back and revisit places we’ve already urbanised and developed and question whether they really fit,” she says. “There [could be] a lot more capacity by reorganising those landscapes, making them more efficient, retooling them or refitting them or retrofitting them to better match the demands of the moment.” There were about 1500 enclosed shopping centres in the US and research indicates more than 500 of those have been partially or wholly retrofitted into more socially, environmentally or economically sustainable places. Single-use suburbs are out Williamson says the cultural cultivation of the Great American Dream as a detached house in the suburbs gave rise to the creation of dormitory suburbs and a reliance on the car. “Because of the separation that it entailed to have the homogenous kind of neighbourhood, then you got into having separate areas for shopping and for working, and for learning and for recreation. “And the need to connect all of those things and the emergence of an increasing dependency on cars for everything.” Large vacant shopping centres may be in the media but it’s the smaller strip retail and big box retail assets that can have the biggest impact on a local area. Williamson says there are examples of these assets being successfully repurposed to make them more mixed-use and that “it’s an opportunity because that churn is happening anyway”. “A lot of the development types that grew up around suburban residential and subdivision developments have a relatively short life both in economic terms, in terms of the initial investment and when those developers have realised all of their profit and return, and also the physical stuff of the buildings,” she says. “Those places need to be revisited anyway. They either need to be reinvested in and upgraded or sold off or turned into something else. In the retail and commercial world this is definitely the case. ▲ The Austin Community College refitted the Highland Shopping Mall to create an education campus and plans additional buildings for the site. “Even the shopping malls, which are the larger properties, there’s a lot of press about the dying shopping malls because they’re so big and visible. But it’s the strip retail and big box stores that take up a lot of real estate and when they’re vacant, not only do they not bring in tax income, they’re eyesores, and they bring down other properties and degrade the landscape.” From shops to classrooms Williamson cites an example of a good mall repurposing, which created an education campus within the building. “[It’s a] shopping mall that has been turned into a community college campus. There’s light rail that goes there and so it’s become a hub that students all live around and get to easily,” she says. Austin Community College initially took over the floorplate of a department store within the shopping centre but it has grown to absorb the entire former shopping centre, with plans to add buildings within the footprint. The shopping centre is well connected with light rail and local amenity, and Williamson says it’s created a “live, work, play” asset for students and the broader community. A former airport in Austin has also been reimagined as a 283ha mixed-use development, including homes, commercial real estate and parks. It was built in public-private partnership to create a new community. Business parks ‘great opportunity’ Williamson says business parks probably present the biggest opportunity for repurposing. “The argument with skyscrapers is that they’re very hard to convert, for so many reasons. It can work but you have to invest a lot of money into it,” she says. “I would argue that these suburban business parks are much more easily convertible to housing as they’re fairly cheaply built, they’re only a few storeys tall, you can punch holes in them, you can reskin them and put terraces on them. “We have a real need for affordable living and these business parks present a great opportunity.” ▲ The Robert Mueller Municipal Airport was decommissioned in 1999 and repurposed as a 283-home mixed-use community. An Eero Saarinen-designed business park in New Jersey is one such example [ main image ]. Once dubbed the “biggest mirror” for its reflective facade, the modernist building has been revitalised. Now called Bell Works, it serves as a business incubator and features a boutique rooftop hotel, childcare and a public library. “They’ve used the main atrium of the quarter-mile building as almost like a main street, so as to make it feel like a mixed-use downtown centre. “They program yoga and social events there, so there are reasons for people who don’t even work there to go and have lunch and walk around. “That’s a very successful example.” But as with anything the devil is in the detail. Williamson says every site needs a granular response. “The answer for us is always … it depends … you’re not just building something out in a greenfield, you actually have a community there now with particular needs. So if you have this piece of property that’s underutilised, it’s no longer fit for purpose, it’s vacant, what does that particular community most need. “That should be driving the solution.” You are currently experiencing The Urban Developer Plus (TUD+), our premium membership for property professionals. Click here to learn more.

[+] Savvy Reuse Injects Vitality into Suburban Dead Zones

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