74 Broad Street - update
The Burlington Coat Factory has closed. The old Caldor building in which it was located will likely be demolished to make way for new housing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StamfordCT/comments/1e2l1wc/burlington_finally_closed/
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update:
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699 Canal Street
The supermarket closed four years ago, and the building has been vacant ever since.
1937 West Main Street
Another vacant supermarket coming soon.
91 Hope Street
The townhouses were approved, even though the neighbors complained very vociferously. Neighborhood associations in Glenbrook may not have the resources to pursue years of lawsuits.
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/stamford-hope-street-townhomes-haitian-19609814.php
2135 Summer Street
The new Burlington Coat Factory has opened.
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74 Broad Street
Old Caldor (more recently Burlington Coat Factory) retail building to be demolished (built 1965). In its place will be built a 7-story 280-unit apartment building.
For the first time a rendering was released.
source: https://www.stamfordct.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/37677/638622583414630000
460 Summer Street
Nearly across Summer Street from the proposed “74 Broad Street” development described above, this old largely vacant office building (built 1967) is proposed to be converted into 40 apartments.
source: https://www.stamfordct.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/37679/638622583442700000
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This project is a nice upgrade for the area, more than the nearby Asher development because of the street-level retail. These big box stores have no place in an urban core and have contributed to downtown Stamford’s soulless, strip mall vibe for too long. While we’re at it, how about we put the Town Center mall out of its misery, and replace it with similar mixed-use developments!
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I’m going to take a slightly different tack here and say the Coat Factory building wasn’t that terrible, especially in comparison to other worse buildings nearby…it had a decent amount of windows at ground level, and no surface parking or street-facing parking.
The size and street frontage was comparable with traditional department stores that have long been found in vibrant downtowns – think the Macy’s in Midtown Manhattan and the Manhattan Mall/former Gimbels right across the street, or the former Macy’s in downtown Brooklyn.
The big issue on that corner in Stamford is that the sidewalks are too narrow and the roadway too wide. Super unpleasant to walk down a narrow sidewalk with cars zooming past at unsafe speeds because the road is too wide. Hard to tell from the photo but it’s barely enough to get a double-wide stroller or a wheelchair through, let alone support two-way foot traffic. The Brooklyn Macy’s sidewalk is about twice to three times as wide.
Also, not enough people walking to the store rather than driving to it – and that issue is itself caused by (1) not enough customers within walking distance (which the housing in this project will help fix) and (2) walking being miserable due to the ultra-narrow sidewalk next to the too-wide street. Stamford still has a lot of work to do on issue #2–making the city a place pedestrians want to be in and walk around in rather than a place for outside motorists to drive through.
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Fair points, and certainly preferable to an empty or surface parking lot. I would hope we can strive for better street activation than what is ultimately a 250ft long brick wall with a few windows and a garage entrance- Bedford Street around the corner shows how this can be done while still lacking in residential density. Even the 34th St. Macy’s is not what I would call ideal commercial street fabric, building aesthetics notwithstanding.
You are absolutely right about Broad Street itself, an urban stroad that again contributes to the strip mall character of this corridor. They could easily chop two lanes off this street and replace this laughable sharrow with real bike/ped infrastructure. Make it happen Stamford!
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The Burlington Coat Factory facade was a slight improvement over the old Caldor facade, but not by much.
You can see what it used to look like in my previous post here:
In any case, they both looked very suburban.
Why was it built like this?
The dominant architectural trend during Stamford’s urban-redevelopment phase (1960s-1980s) was car-based fortress architecture. The archetypes of this are the Stamford Town Center mall (fortress facades on Broad Street and Greyrock Place) and Stamford Plaza corporate park (fortress facades on North State Street and Tresser Boulevard). Amazingly, the Target department store that was built a couple decades ago on Broad Street continued this trend, with two floors of retail on top of four floors of car parking, a great inconvenience to pedestrians who have take an elevator all the way to the top to shop. The whole goal of these developments, along with grotesquely wide streets such as Tresser Boulevard, is to get folks in cars in and out of downtown as fast as possible. No one bothered to care how these buildings interacted with the street. The Stamford mall should have been torn down a decade ago - the fact that it remains standing in its zombie state is an embarrassment for downtown.
People are asking if there’s too much density in Stamford?
If anything, there’s not enough!
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They’re in the process of making the street better along with Atlantic street
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I guess my point is that it doesn’t seem that fortress-like, especially compared to the mall or the Target? Two big pedestrian entrances that open onto the street, plus a bunch of display windows along the facade. When I think of fortress-like architecture, I think of a blank facade, unbroken by windows, that extends for hundreds of feet.
But my opinion comes from the Google Street View. Maybe the Google Street View is deceiving. Not sure if I’ve ever walked past the coat factory building in person.
Hilarious that you think that Stamford would do this when they can’t even build unique buildings that are architecturally significant in anyway, continue to destroy any historical buildings they do have, continue to erect “Commons by the Riverside Silverlake on the Town” esque buildings, still don’t have a proper grocery store for Harbor Point, and don’t have low enough rent for unique shopping and restaurants in Stamford to come in, let alone any sort of culture to make its mark and lend its spirit to Stamford. But you want them to do what, again? As they say, Stamford is a cultural hell hole, and this includes making it easier for people to commute via bikes.
They WILL build some god awful “rental commons” or fortress building where Burlington was, some cheap Walmart or something may even set up residence, and nothing that contributes back to the culture or spirit of Stamford (if there even is one) will be included. Nothing that elevates Stamford.
There are so many empty storefronts here that this is flat out laughable. Only banks, investment firms and maybe the occasional medical facility can rent them out, and they’ve maxed out most locations. So this will be another “The Commons in Central Town Square” type of building (again, why is Stamford not demanding buildings actually bring more architecture to their facades?) that brings NOTHING to the culture of Stamford.
What’s going on is we’re all tired of Stamford being treated like a soulless place that’s just sold to the highest bidder. There is no care or regards, like you find in NY, for historical sites, for surrounding structures, for adding or building Stamford’s culture. It’s sad and there was such hope Stamford could actually become something more. It’s just the same old. mid, at best, housing for students, same-old housing for the elderly, natives being pushed out bc everyone is trying to cut costs with employment, and the rest of us are just watching what little, spirited soul of our city was left wither out and die bc it’s too expensive here to even build or maintain any culture. It’s sad.
The best way to fill out empty storefronts in a downtown is to build housing for a bunch of customers to live in within walking distance. And instead of requiring two parking spaces per unit, remove parking requirements. Residents who are car-lite or car-free are more likely to go shopping on foot while 2-car households are more likely to drive out of town to patronize businesses in the suburbs. Not to beat up on Stamford, but the parking requirements there are way out of line with what they should be in a city center. Garages also contribute to fortress architecture.
But Stamford is doing one thing right: adding residents. It takes a lot of residents to support a bit of retail, and stores need to see the population increase register in the census before they feel comfortable investing, so the improvement won’t be immediate, but it will come.
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