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| Potential Unmet. Promises Unkept. |
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| Mixed-use is not a few townhouses next to a big box. The future of retail is very different than the suburban strip mall, and the brick and mortar model is evolving. It's all about the in-store experience, not just the shopping opportunity. Over the last 50 years, retail space has grown much faster than retail sales. Too much, too far apart. And clear-cutting virgin land is much easier than adaptive reuse. But there are opportunities.
In the mixed-use equation, we are heavy on residential, retail, but what we lack is office – business. We need to shape our zoning to incent owners of commercial spaces to attract class A office tenants, and recondition or repurpose retail space for something other than multi-family residential.
We need active economic development: a pipeline of businesses that we prospect on a regular basis, a business retention program, so we have more time than a month before a major store closing.
We need to think outside the box. Healthcare is one of our strongest industries, bio-tech companies could be a good fit. The “campus” model of small related businesses has had success. We are the home of so many innovative restaurants – a culinary or food services campus could be a good fit.
Resources: I authored Roswell's 'Big Box Ordinance' that protects neighborhoods from large retailers who want to abandon their “mega” stores to move across town into newer digs.
I co-authored Roswell's Master Planned Mixed-Use Ordinance.
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