NEW
URBANISM
Abacoa Revisited, Mizner Park Reviewed
by Keith Alan Deutsch
| According to the Congress on
New Urbanism, the modern New Urbanism movement (NU) emerged in the late 1980s as a new
approach to the creation and revitalization of communities in North America. Based on real
property development patterns used prior to World War II, NU seeks to reintegrate the
components of modern life housing, workplace, shopping and recreation into compact,
pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use neighborhoods linked by transit and set in a larger
regional open space, or park, context. Although NU is a global movement that has captured the imagination of professors, social planners, and developers around the world, it is a chameleon concept that finds different forms of expression, depending on who is its spokesperson. In America, NU is often presented as an alternative to suburban sprawl. Suddenly, everyone seems to despise low-density development that depends on car traffic to move from office park to shopping mall to bedroom community at the expense of social interaction and a sense of neighborhood and community. According to George de Guardiola, president of Guardiola Development Ventures, Inc. (see “New Urbanism” ESP Magazine, September 1998), in America the movement is best known for projects built in new growth areas such as Seaside (Walton County, Florida, 1981; Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk Town Planners), Kentlands (Gaithersburg, Maryland, 1988; Duany and Plater-Zyberk Town Planners) and Laguna West (Sacramento County, California, 1990; Calthorpe Associates). But the principles that define NU also lend themselves to redevelopment sites within existing downtowns and cities. Leading proponents of NU believe that redevelopment should be given priority over new development in order to revitalize city centers and limit that hateful sprawl. |
Despite its benefits and appeal, NU has
yet to be broadly embraced as a development model in America. There are a number of
possible reasons for NU’s slow adoption. NU’s physical design standards are not
fully compatible with the regulatory framework in most regions of the U.S. For example,
many fire departments require streets that are wider than those proposed by the NU model.
Zoning laws often require large setbacks for homes and businesses. Perhaps the most
interesting reason is that the real estate industry is highly segmented by land use
category, such as single-family housing, multi-family housing, retail, office, and so on.
Each category has its own practices and financing sources. The integrated development
strategy advocated by NU requires an integrated procedure for community planning that few
developers are ready to tackle.
We asked De Guardiola, whose 2,055-acre, $250-million, classic NU
project, Abacoa, is due to open next spring in Jupiter, Florida, why he took on such a
mammoth project given the inherent challenges.
Abacoa’s master plan includes, among other facilities: 6,000
alternatives in apartments and single-family homes; two state university campuses; the
$20-million Roger Dean Stadium, spring training home to the St. Louis Cardinals and the
Montreal Expos; a 40,000-sq.ft. fitness club and golf course; two elementary schools and a
middle school; a 2-million-sq.ft. office campus, with AT&T as anchor; and a 25-acre
town center with a 325,000-sq.ft. entertainment retail facility that can expand to 500,000
sq.ft., anchored by a 79,000-sq.ft. Crown Theaters megaplex that includes an IMAX theater.
The retail component includes 40,000 sq.ft. of food tenants and 84,000 sq.ft. of
neighborhood retail tenants to serve the local community, office workers, and university
students. An open-air theater and a 130-room hotel convention facility are also planned
for the town center.
| “Abacoa represents everything I believe in for a unified community. With all these unique and diverse activities and institutions, I believe we will have created a wonderful place where people can come together. You are right. It has been very challenging. You really need conviction and you must believe in what you are doing. And you need experience.” For example, de Guardiola and his team were the master developers for the town of Wellington, which started out as a project ten years ago and is now a municipality. “And there are many benefits to integrated community development based on the New Urbanism model,” de Guardiola told us. “New Urbanism properties tend to bring higher prices than those in more conventional adjacent developments. |  |
| And based on the returns from Mizner Park, a
New Urbanism project in downtown Boca Raton, retailers and national chains are doing
significantly more business, eclipsing the returns in nearby Boca Raton power
centers.” Why do you think retail returns are higher? “The retail returns are not just higher. The Mizner Park tenants have won the market share. Why? One, it is a safe environment. Two, many of the customers already live in Mizner Park. Three, deliveries are easily made to the local customers. And the local retailers are connected to the local customers by a sense of community. Four, there are a variety of parking options. Perhaps best of all, pedestrian traffic is very qualified. Mizner Park has become a shopping destination. People like to be in the environment. There are fountains and birds. Visitors come to spend time, eat dinner, enjoy themselves - and shop. With vehicular traffic shoppers who come to power centers, only one in ten comes to spend time. Most customers want to get in and out. At Mizner Park, people come for events, festivals, the sidewalk action, to walk around. They park and forget about their car. They want to stay.” |
| Studies done by de
Guardiola’s team, based on a walking shoe tenant with stores at both Mizner Park and
at the power center, indicate that sales at Mizner were $1,000 per foot. “That’s
running laps around the power center competition. It is astonishing. Another indicator of
the effectiveness for retailers in the integrated New Urbanism setting is that
Mizner’s rents have doubled, while the power center’s rents have gone up 3
percent. We tracked the rents.” We asked JoAnn Root, marketing director for Mizner Park (561-362-0606), why she thought the retailing was so successful at her project. “We start with great demographics. We’re user-friendly. There is valet parking and plenty of garage parking. Our most recent studies indicate that we have become a shopping destination. People plan to come and stay for up to a day. They like the park and the birds and fountains. They like the dining. Most people plan a dining and shopping visit.” If a focus group were taken today in Florida about the kind of retailer that people feel good about, says de Guardiola, power center and traditional shopping mall retailers would not be chosen. Instead, de Guardiola predicts that people would respond to old downtown, local venders. “It is the way we feel about window shopping along an interesting street in a setting that is attractive, safe, and in the right scale Main Street USA. That’s why architecture determines the success or failure of the pedestrian environment.” |
| We noted what Disney did to his
Main Street at Disneyland so many decades ago. He reduced all the buildings to two thirds
their real scale in order to make the environment even more comfortable. “Intimacy in
an integrated and organic setting is an essential to New Urbanism planning,” de
Guardiola says. “Streets are interesting to walk down. They connect to one another.
There is always something to see. Actually, the streets at Mizner Park are wider than I
would have liked, and pedestrian traffic doesn’t always work on both sides of the
street. But there are always administrative problems when you are creating a real life
project rather than just planning one.” We asked de Guardiola what were some of the problems he had to overcome to make Abacoa real? What about financing? Did he have his financiers in on the project from the planning stage? “Financing is much harder for an integrated New Urbanism project, particularly on this scale. We should have had lenders on board from the beginning, but we didn’t. But we ended up with great financing from GMAC and Lehman Brothers. There was no municipal financing from the town of Jupiter, but infrastructure financing was provided by a special taxing district, a community development district that issues bonds. Actually it is a “quasi-governmental” agency that goes back to Florida’s agricultural roots. That is one of Florida’s large-scale project financing tools.” |
| Any other problems?
“The whole administrative review process is very awkward. The municipality of Jupiter
reviews the plans. A regional commission, Treasure Coast Planning, also reviews them. And
then Florida’s Department of Community Affairs reviews. A major problem is that the
guidelines and laws in Florida do not recognize the merits of New Urbanism. Rather, they
are based on the suburban subdivision model. So we had to write our own zoning code -
Jupiter didn’t have one. We wrote our traffic code. It was a cautious cooperative
effort between us and the government.” Can you name any elements that are vital to this kind of project? “Well pedestrian traffic that works is essential. You need wide enough sidewalks. You need more than enough parking, or you undermine one of the major benefits of the whole design. I hope we are creating a place where there is a sense of belonging, a sense of permanence, and one of main street verities and tradition.” George de Guardiola and his Abacoa team must be doing something right. This year they won nine “Best Awards” from the Southern Florida Builders Association. Between Abacoa and Mizner Park, it looks like Florida has become the right playing field for New Urbanism developers to make real their dream of delivering functional community systems where people can live, play, work and shop. For leasing or other information on Abacoa, contact George de Guardiola, president, de Guardiola Development Ventures, Inc. 561-655-1838; for leasing or other information on Mizner Park contact JoAnn Root, marketing director, 561-362-0606; the Congress on New Urbanism can be reached at 415-49-2255, or on the web at www.cnu.org. |