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YESTERDAY MEETS TOMORROW

Integrating new retail centers into historic neighborhoods

By Joel Groover

At Fleur d’Eau, a new glass-and-steel retail center in the heart of Angers, France, shoppers step out of such stores as H&M, Monoprix and Planète Saturn to gaze up at breathtaking views of the 14th-century Villebon Tower and the Gothic spires of the Cathedral of St. Maurice. At Príncipe Pío, a restored, 125-year-old train station in Madrid’s historic district, millions of visitors over the course of a year stroll through a new, three-level retail, dining and entertainment hub before departing for such destinations as the royal palace or the Prado National Museum.

Financially successful and feted by architecture critics and preservationists alike, such projects show how retail architects can help historic or even ancient neighborhoods adapt to the ebb and flow of 21st-century commerce. Of course, no one says it’s easy.

“You can actually say they’re an absolute nightmare,” quipped Jorge Beroiz, lead architect on Príncipe Pío and a vice president in the London office of Baltimore-based RTKL.

Indeed, architects, developers and urban planners often endure migraine-intensity headaches when working on retail projects in places where history looms. Protecting listed buildings from harm amid a maelstrom of construction, haggling with preservation boards that can be spring-loaded to the “no” position, or just figuring out how to get cars and delivery trucks through narrow, winding alleyways are typical tests of will.

So is it worth the pain? “There is a magical, intangible value to renovating a historic building,” said Robert J. Gibbs, an urban-planning consultant and the founder of Gibbs Planning Group, Birmingham, Mich. “It is seen as a link to the past … and that translates economically to something unique that nobody else has.”

Too bad more people don’t see it that way, though. Gibbs, who has helped officials in Charleston, S.C.; Naples, Fla.; Galveston, Texas; and a host of other American cities revitalize their historic districts, finds it ironic that the very officials who ought to be most concerned about saving such places can be their worst enemies. These efforts tend to be public-private undertakings, he says, but city councils and even planning boards are loath to spend the kind of money needed to transform landmarks into economic engines. “It’s very difficult to change people’s perceptions that the historic district is worthwhile and should be saved and that there will be a return on investment,” Gibbs said. “Almost always the consensus is that the buildings should be torn down.”

By gutting historic areas, some cities are losing what could be a key defense against new economic threats out in the suburbs, Gibbs says. “The new lifestyle centers that are being built that have a main street, active sidewalks, residential on top of the retail, sometimes now libraries and churches and post offices — those new centers look and feel like towns,” he said. “It is enough of an urban fix that it is a real threat to historic downtowns.” On the other hand, a well-designed project that incorporates historic buildings and plays up their past can win over those who hunger for an authentic urban experience, Gibbs says.

Making such magic happen can require epic patience. Any large retail or mixed-use project involves politicking with multiple stakeholders, but when historic preservation enters the equation, a new layer of difficulty unfolds, says Y.E. Smith, a vice president of retail design at Cincinnati-based FRCH Design Worldwide. The degree of that difficulty varies from place to place. Some are open to change.

“In London the Soho district and the area around Covent Garden has been going through quite a bit of growth for renovation, adaptive reuse, new architecture and increased densities for about 10 years,” Smith said. Others are less so. “I lived in Florence, Italy, for a year, and the people there were quite reluctant to have anything new within a medieval wall. Other Italian cities, like Rome and Milan, are more forward-thinking.”

In Príncipe Pío’s case, RTKL and Madrid-based developer Riofisa faced the constant scrutiny of the Madrid Historic Heritage Committee, a subgroup of the city council that had the power to nix any plans it felt could compromise the aesthetics of the redbrick train station. The committee gave the nod to such modern additions as a soaring glass atrium, Beroiz says, but its patience had limits. The easiest way to build an 840-space underground parking structure to serve the project, for example, would have been to dismantle the train station, put in the parking and then reassemble the building on top of it.

“[The committee] said: ‘Absolutely not. The train shed stays exactly the way it is, ’ ” Beroiz recalls. “So what we needed to do was quite an incredible engineering exercise. We had to excavate underneath the structure, creating a substructure to hold it in place and leaving it almost floating. Then we excavated the three levels of parking and another level of retail as well.”

The overall goal of Príncipe Pío, which opened in November 2004, was to bring some 70 retail, dining and entertainment tenants, including Benetton, H&M and Zara, to Madrid’s high-density but underserved historic district. This involved the addition of a 110,000-square-foot retail center to the train shed itself. At one point the project ground to a halt because of an impasse with the preservation board over ventilation, says Beroiz.

“We had food outlets in this big shed space, but because of the smell — and, actually, for fire regulations as well — we had to ventilate the kitchens to the open air,” Beroiz said. “We had to perforate the roof, but the Spanish heritage organization was saying, ‘No, don’t touch the roof.’ ” After extensive negotiations, the board signed off on a design in which a large ventilation shaft opened out through the roof toward the rear of the shed. “Somebody had to give,” Beroiz said. “Otherwise, what do you do?”

The peccadilloes of preservationists can force retail architects and developers to rethink projects in beneficial ways. In Washington, locally based Roadside Development owns a two-block parcel on which a 35,000-square-foot Giant Foods grocery sits next to a 12,000-square-foot market built in the 1880s. The state preservation officer refused to recommend the original plan, which would have divided the historic building into five storefronts. His recommendation was needed to obtain tax credits. “It has a peaked roof that goes up 42 feet with monitor windows and is big and open and light and airy,” said Armond Spikell, a Roadside Development principal. “Here we were dividing it up into smaller shops and changing the use.”

Instead, the developers now plan to connect the Giant Foods to the 1880s market. They also seek to add a hotel, 200 units of market-rate rental housing, 100 units of low-income senior housing and 300 condos to the site. “When you go into the grocery store, you’ll be going into its regular power aisle with produce, bakery and so forth,” Spikell said. “As you proceed down the aisle, you’ll wind up inside the historic building. You’ll be able to look up to the 42-foot-high windows, the steel trusses and exposed brick walls. It will be one of the coolest grocery stores certainly in the mid-Atlantic, if not on the East Coast.”

The project is under review by historic preservationists, with a ground-breaking planned for late 2008. It is just a block north of the new Washington Convention Center and a short walk from the popular Gallery Place dining and entertainment district. As originally envisioned, its small shops might have served wealthy newcomers to the once-blighted neighborhood, but the expanded, 70,000-square-foot Giant Foods will cater to all income brackets and thus enjoys broad community support, Spikell says.

And this hints at the value of preserving not just fine historic architecture, but also its past role within the larger urban fabric, says Seth Harry, founder of Seth Harry & Associates, a Woodbine, Md., architectural and urban-planning firm. Harry urges developers to resist the temptation to transplant suburban models into downtowns. “Urbanism is a living, breathing thing,” he said. “It has a continuity that needs to be respected and acknowledged.”

That was precisely the thinking behind Fleur d’Eau, developed by Paris-based Apsys in the history-rich Angers city center (a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The 136,985-square-foot retail center actually replaced an obsolete mall from the 1970s, Les Halles, which had been built on a suburban model with interior-facing stores and large, indoor common areas. This type of design cuts visitors off from the engaging city just outside, Harry says.

With Fleur d’Eau, which opened in May 2005, Parisian architecture firm AU4G took the opposite tack. The new center’s “extroverted” design embraces its environment, rather than turning from it. Fleur d’Eau has no interior common areas. Each shop opens onto the city streets. Its three-level structure is 90 percent glass-clad, which reflects nearby historic buildings, and its staggered rooflines create new views of Villebon Tower and St. Maurice Cathedral.

Much like I.M. Pei’s famous glass pyramid outside the Louvre, Fleur d’Eau’s highly modern aesthetic complements its ancient surroundings by contrasting with them. This approach works in a city like Paris, with its abundance of old buildings, but would falter elsewhere, says Harry. “If you just took Pei’s pyramid and stuck it in the middle of a parking lot in Hoboken, New Jersey, it would look like exactly what it is,” he said. “It helps to have a former French palace in the background.”

But retail architects working in American historic districts tend to favor designs that echo, rather than contrast with, the original architecture. At Centro Ybor, in Tampa, Fla., Baltimore-based Development Design Group took advantage of local history to enliven four city blocks with new restaurants, shops and cafés. The project, located in Tampa’s old cigar-rolling district, was subject to review by the Barrio Latino Commission preservation board. A landmark social hall forms one edge of Centro Ybor, which offers shaded plazas, wrought-iron balconies and cigar-box-inspired graphics. “You had a fabulous street there already, Seventh Street, and you had these wonderful metal colonnades, structures on top of brick warehouses,” said Brandon Diamond, senior associate. “There was a definite street rhythm — covered, shaded — a wonderful kind of Southern vernacular already established.”

But most historic districts went up during eras when the street rhythm was far sleepier than it is today, of course. Smaller buildings, narrower streets, antiquated sewer systems and other relics of those simpler times can pose thorny problems. But Gibbs says these are no longer deal breakers for the tenants needed to make such projects work. “Banana Republic, for example, loves historic buildings,” he said. “They have them in Portland, Oregon; Miami Beach; and Charleston. There has been an overreaction among cities against national chains because they have all looked the same. Being in historic buildings helps position the brand as not being a mega-chain.” In fact, some retailers are modifying storefronts in newly constructed buildings to make them look historic, he says.

Many are also adapting their operations so that they function better within the smaller footprints typical of historic districts. At Excelsior & Grand, a small, mixed-use redevelopment in the 1950s-era neighborhood of St. Louis Park, Minn., Trader Joe’s does high volume — in excess of $1,000 per square foot, according to one market watcher — while handling deliveries with impressive efficiency. “They deliver all their own goods, haul away all their own trash and do so all on one semi,” said Dennis J. Sutliff, a principal at Minneapolis-based Elness Swenson Graham Architects, which designed Excelsior & Grand. “It is scheduled, totally managed. That’s hard to do in a town center setting where you’ve got traditional blocks and streets and on-street parking.”

Walgreens stores thrive without the multiple loading bays typical of suburban stores. “Panel trucks will pull right up onto the sidewalk in front of the store and just start unloading all of the goods,” said Smith. “Money is money. If they can make it in the city, why not be there?”

Increasingly, other retailers known for being suburban mainstays are thinking in similar terms about historic districts. New formats maximize space in novel ways, Gibbs says. “Target has a model where they put the building up one level, put parking on the ground floor and then surround the parking with shop fronts, with other retailers,” said Gibbs. “Even The Home Depot and Lowe’s are wrapping their big boxes with storefronts.”

So does such innovation mean that bringing retail and history together will one day be a hassle-free proposition? Don’t count on it, says Beroiz, who is currently wrestling with the logistics of a mixed-use revitalization for tiny San Pellegrino, Italy. Europeans, who have been building modern retail centers in ancient neighborhoods for far longer than their U.S. counterparts, know to expect setbacks and that patience and flexibility are important.

“The old towns have a history, a heritage, and people are attracted to that,” he said. “If they don’t see the anchor, or if the floor-to-floor height, instead of being 6 meters, is 3.2 — which is terrible for retail — then so be it. Relax— it is going to work fine. These are special settings, and these special settings attract people.”

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