When urban geographer Siim Soot charts the varied fortunes of downtown merchants, he looks mildly amused. Retailers who might be strutting today may stumble tomorrow. Nothing ever stays the same. In half a century, the display windows that currently drip luxury all over Michigan Avenue could be boarded up.
For now, a walking tour with Soot (rhymes with ”shirt”) must inevitably wind up on the city`s retailing Valhalla, but as he strides past the expensive shops, he cocks a skeptical eyebrow.
”Fifty or sixty years from now, these buildings will no longer be new,” he reflected during an afternoon stroll up Michigan. ”Some of them could get run-down. They could lose their status.”
Soot, 47, teaches urban geography at the University of Illinois at Chicago and frequently consults for private industry. Tall and blond with an authoritative bearing, Soot still talks with a slight Estonian accent, although he has lived in this country since he was 8.
Concrete canyons
An urban geographer, he explains, analyzes cities as if all the concrete, glass and steel were as natural as rivers and mountains and as well-defined as borders. Manmade features either describe our living patterns or force us into compromises with the very environment we have created. Therefore, urban geography is a discipline spiced with traces of folly.
During Soot`s forays around town, ideas often snag him, almost like grappling hooks. And when they do, he pauses abruptly and gestures broadly.
For example, on that afternoon walking tour, an important thought occurred as he crossed the little park surrounding the old Water Tower. Soot stopped in his tracks.
”This is very typical of what State Street used to be,” he said.
”State Street used to be a long, long ribbon, and right now Michigan Avenue is that. Michigan Avenue is succeeding because it`s in its heyday. It`s going to be interesting to see how long it will remain as a very important shopping area.”
If anything, Michigan Avenue may turn out to be too long and ribbonlike. State, once a dynamo of retailing, eventually lost circulation in its lower extremity, starting around Van Buren Street.
Soot preaches the gospel of access and nearness. On long, ribbonlike streets, pedestrians may find the distances forbidding, particularly if they must shop their way from one end to the other. Thus daunted, they grasp at alternatives-such as suburban shopping malls or long, ribbonlike boulevards where an overriding sense of excitement puts happiness in their feet.
Soot`s elaborate pedestrian-traffic surveys help planners as they try to resurrect lifeless areas of the State Street Mall, which suffers, he says, because its stores are so distant from the commuter stations and the offices of La Salle Street-and, in some cases, from one another.
Michigan Avenue could suffer from similar handicaps; the trains are far away, the offices remote. But the area does have novelty and glamor on its side, and some of the most prosperous customers live right above the stores.
”The advantage Michigan Avenue has is this mystical association with the lakeshore,” Soot observed, holding his ground in the little park while pedestrians surged around him. ”But Michigan does not enjoy good access by public transportation to suburban Chicago, a factor that may not be that important to shoppers-yet-but it could be in the future.”
Unlike State Street, Michigan is surrounded by Gold Coast residences. Because of its cachet, shoppers from near and far have been willing to break some of the Codes of Pedestrian Behavior that Soot has formulated through his research over the years.
Two-block reaches
People, he has learned, ordinarily refuse to walk much farther than two blocks without some kind of meaningful respite, such as a coffee break or a good browse.
Furthermore, the public transportation that gets them to their stomping ground must be swift, comfortable, convenient and efficient. Otherwise, people will huddle in their cars and shop only where merchants offer parking in abundance-that is, stores in the suburbs.
Something bothered Soot as he stood in the little park and slowly looked around. ”The Water Tower here is a plus and a minus,” he said. ”It`s an important landmark, and people come to see it as a landmark, and yet it`s a significant dividing line between what`s north of it and what`s south of it.
”If you consider typical shoppers-people who want to conduct business in a short radius-once they`re in Water Tower Place and they want to go down to Neiman Marcus, they`ve got two streets to cross.”
As urban geography would have it, shoppers must exit Water Tower Place and trek south past those fusty, boutique-barren Old Water Tower buildings before they can find another department store. It`s asking a bit much, in Soot`s opinion.
”I`m sure Neiman Marcus would have loved to be across the street from Water Tower Place, so that both of them would have benefited from being closer to each other,” he said.
A break at the core
”You always have a core area, where people congregate, and a retailer wants to be as close to it as possible. Here-with the Water Tower buildings and the parks-you have this unusual land-use discontinuity, and it`s on both sides of Michigan, so you don`t bridge the gap on either side.”
Soot indicated that shoppers prefer their stores cheek-by-jowl, as they find them in the big malls. That desire for instant mercantile gratification challenges developers to make downtown stores as accessible as possible.
Strolling north on the west side of Michigan and crossing Chestnut Street, Soot noted another break in the retailing ribbon-the block where Fourth Presbyterian Church faces the John Hancock Center.
”The church is a symbol, very much like St. Patrick`s on Fifth Avenue in New York,” he said. ”I can`t quite picture replacing it with something else. On the other hand, it`s a break in the land use. The shops around the Hancock are too far recessed from the street. With the shops at 900 N. Michigan (the building holding Bloomingdale`s) north of here and Water Tower Place to the south, there`s good reason to provide some sort of natural access between them.”
Another thought snagged him. Soot halted and observed that most of the northbound pedestrians on the east side of Michigan would suddenly cross the avenue at Chestnut Street and continue their journey on the west side of Michigan.
”People want to be part of the action,” he said, ”and the women who spent hundreds of dollars on their hairdos may feel there`s more protection from the wind on the west side. I think, though, that they would much rather pass through some kind of atrium complex in front of the Hancock.”
Atrium acrimony
Soot, of course, knew that plans for just such an atrium had been crippled by controversy. Developers wanted to build out toward the sidewalk and catch big spenders. Opponents feared a project like that would add another dark canyon to an already darkening street and ruin the majestic sweep of the building`s architecture.
The geographer, however, did not find the atrium idea essential to the health of a thoroughfare that already sluices money. ”Michigan Avenue doesn`t need a lot of help right now,” he said. ”The area is prospering. If it were declining, then you might want to look around to see what could be done to stimulate it.”
Soot then led the way into 900 N. Michigan, the 17-month-old vertical mall anchored by Bloomingdale`s. Retail tenants at first had complained about poor business. Management sought to boost traffic with heavy advertising, and reports indicate that the volume has increased in recent months.
Soot said he could understand why crowds had failed to materialize when it opened in the fall of 1988.
He gazed at the lofty, marble-clad complex studded with Art Deco light fixtures and immediately noticed a few off-putting features. ”I think one of the problems is that the space is too linear,” he offered. ”In Water Tower Place-at least the core portion-the space feels circular, and you can see what`s around the circumference.
”At any level in Water Tower Place, you can see what`s above you and below you. Here, it`s a linear development, and you don`t have the visual contact with all the stores. Substantial posts restrict visibility.”
Too much luxury?
The storekeepers at 900 N. Michigan also might have suffered from a sudden overdose of luxury, Soot surmised. ”When you think about how many new retailers (85) have descended on a relatively small area, it`s a shock that not too many places can absorb.
”If the area already had 10 facilities like Water Tower Place, another one would not add that much, proportionately. But on Michigan Avenue, this is really only the second multilevel facility. You just cannot expect something like this to be an overnight success.”
Soot swiveled his head toward a quiet elevator alcove and squinted speculatively. ”One of the really handy aspects of Water Tower Place is the bank of elevators in the middle,” he said. ”You walk in, ride the escalator up through a dramatic entrance-they don`t have a dramatic entrance here-you take the express elevator up to the 7th floor and then you work your way down. ”Bloomingdale`s is obviously very inviting at the end of this atrium, but when you go to Bloomingdale`s, you tend to bypass all these other places. The elevators are tucked away in the corner and they don`t have the presence they do in Water Tower, so the setup doesn`t allow the same kind of exploratory shopping. You want people to ride the elevators. You want them to go to the top, see what`s there. And if a person has a particular thing in mind, you don`t want him to come in, look around, be discouraged and then leave.
”You want people to come into the complex and go up to whatever would be the farthest corner-here it would be the top of the atrium. You want to make it inviting; you want to get them up there. As they work their way down, by impulse or by recollection of what they want, they purchase things.”
Still more competition
Because of the gaps created by John Hancock`s plaza and Fourth Presbyterian Church and the reluctance of most pedestrians to cover much distance, other cores of activity along the street might tend to siphon them off. Soon, the new developments south of Superior Street also will compete for attention.
”The 900 building is a little too far off the main track,” Soot declared. ”It`s the last major shopping outpost, and a lot of people don`t enjoy walking that far.”
His prescription for the retailers at 900 North is patience. The malls in Oak Brook and Schaumburg seemed overbuilt at first, but populations grew up around them. Now residential areas are beginning to sprout near downtown. Those apartments and townhouses may prove to be the salvation of nearby retailers. City geography eventually reflects the way residents want to live, and they regularly change their minds.
Soot noted, for instance, that people no longer seem impassioned with discount stores. ”In the `60s, we had discount stores galore, many of which have folded. Two things changed after that decade. During the oil crisis of
`73, people perceived transportation to be expensive and began thinking about ways to change their lifestyle. They didn`t want to drive as far to do their shopping.
”The second thing was the increasing value of time. A higher proportion of the population is in the workforce, and when you`re working, you put more of a premium on your leisure time. You don`t have time, or gas, to spend looking for the lowest prices. It`s much more important to just go get what you need.”
In his work, Soot has seen too many U.S. downtowns where weeds grow in the sidewalk cracks while life centers around the outlying malls. So far, the Loop and its immediate surroundings have avoided that fate-largely by imitating the shopping-center model.
The suburban solution
”If we can bring the virtues people find in the suburban areas into the downtown, then there`s some prospect of continued vitality in downtown areas,” Soot predicted.
He therefore approves of developments like Illinois Center and the slowly growing Pedway network of underground Loop tunnels, both of which offer protection from the elements and the opportunity to buy something during odd moments away from the computer terminal.
Michigan Avenue, meanwhile, beckons with splendor and entertainment, attracting those suburbanites tired of spending their money only at indistinguishable Benetton and Foot Locker outlets.
”It`s difficult to counter national trends,” Soot noted, ”and near many U.S. cities, people prefer to shop in outlying areas. Michigan Avenue is popular because of the fad aspect and the fact that people living nearby can walk to it.
”State Street doesn`t enjoy those kinds of advantages at the moment;
it`s going to be difficult for the merchants there to turn things around. But many things swing with the pendulum. Right now, the swing favors Michigan Avenue. In the future, it`s likely the pendulum is going to swing in some other direction-maybe toward State Street, maybe toward somewhere else.”
Siim Soot turned and walked back toward the Loop and the train that would take him home to Winnetka. He has often mentally grappled with the circumstances that led an urban geographer to live in the suburbs, and the apparent discrepancy no longer fazes him.
”I think there are very few people who would raise a family in the immediate downtown area,” he said. ”Once the school system is improved, it might be interesting to see what the city would look like as people moved back.”
Meanwhile, as a devoted city lover, he could note with some pleasure that on his entire trek around downtown, he had trampled not a single weed.
