Observations of Midwest Urbanism

I recently split a week between Omaha and Des Moines.  As much as possible, I observed the current and potential urbanism of both.

Normally, I’d compare and contrast the two cities.  However, the nature of the trip precluded that approach.  Along with a family member, I was following a minor league ballclub for a weeklong roadtrip.  The trip included staying in same hotels as the team.  As I’ve previously written, the Omaha ballclub plays in a cornfield a long ways from downtown Omaha.  Not surprisingly, the visiting team hotel is close to the ballpark, so far from the part of Omaha that would have most interested me.

So the best I can offer is observations about the two cities.

We made a couple of short visits to downtown Omaha.  The downtown grid pattern is fairly strong and logical, although freeways have intruded on it.  There were areas of interesting existing buildings, but on both a Sunday evening and a Monday morning, there was an absence of street activity in most districts.  There was a sense that Omaha was where people worked before hopping onto a freeway to drive to a home in the suburbs.

The only neighborhood that had much street life was the Old Farmers Market District.  On a Sunday evening, it was so filled with activity that we chose not to fight the crowds, but went elsewhere for dinner.

On Monday morning, the district was quieter, so we stopped for breakfast.  Indeed, it was so still that it was obvious that the district relied on tourism for its vitality, which is a different thing than good urbanism.  In a well-conceived and mature urbanist neighborhood, streets are active for most hours of the day all seven days of the week.   The Old Farmers Market District was a fun place to visit, but it was more Disneyland than working city.

Relating Omaha to Northern California equivalents, much of downtown was like the Financial District in San Francisco, nearly deserted on a weekend.  But the Old Farmers Market was like Old Sacramento, hopping during play hours, but largely somnolent during business hours. 

After my trip, I visited with a planner who knows Omaha well.  He confirmed my impression that much of Omaha, with the exception of the Old Farmers Market District, lacks urban vitality.  Nor does the zoning code or the current mayor encourage urbanism.  It’s too bad.  There are missed opportunities for Omaha to be a more interesting place.

Des Moines was a stronger urban place, but still less urban than might be hoped.  The Iowa State Capitol, sited on a hill just east of downtown, is a strong element, providing a visual point of reference from much of the downtown.

Unlike Omaha, the ballpark is close to downtown, almost close enough that we could have walked from the visiting team hotel.  And the State Capitol is noticeable landmark over the centerfield fence, which provides a solid connection between the park and the town.  (Although I understand that the ballplayers aren’t happy about trying to pick up pitches out of a background that includes a sunset reflecting off gold leaf.)

My only concern about the ballpark was that, although close to downtown, the true pedestrian experience was interrupted by parking lots between the public street and the front gate.  However, there were indications that the parking lots will soon be redeveloped into lofts.  I didn’t learn how parking will be provided, but the loft project, especially if it includes retail, will make Principal Park a more complete urban experience.

Otherwise, Des Moines included several neighborhoods that offered urban experiences, although most were thin gruel.

East Village, lying between the Capitol and the Des Moines River, was described as a historic district, but the elements of history were dispersed among a mélange of low government and commercial buildings and lacked a critical mass.  The most distressing element was boarded-up houses a couple of blocks northwest of the Capitol.  If a city can’t create a demand for housing within walking distance of the State Capitol, urbanism is severely lacking.

Court Street was the entertainment district, with a string of brewpubs and music venues.  Perhaps it hops in the evening, but it was awfully quiet through the lunch hour and early afternoon.

The Des Moines River is spanned by a series of bridges, similar to Napa, although they seemed lightly used.  I had a hotel room overlooking the bridges and was surprised to see them bereft of traffic at 8:00 am.  None of us like traffic, but it’s a sign of economic activity and its absence is concerning.

The historic Governor’s Mansion is in the Terrace Hill residential neighborhood, which is filled with interesting architecture, but doesn’t function as a walkable place.

The most exciting blocks I noted in Des Moines were along the route between downtown and Terrace Hill.  With a moderately dense mixture of offices, medical facilities, and residential, and a sprinkling of interesting parks, it seemed to be the area closest to achieving urbanism.  The number of pedestrians on the sidewalks in the early evening supported that observation.

Looking again for a Northern California equivalent, Des Moines is like a sleepier version of Sacramento.  (To those who might be surprised that it’d be possible for Sacramento be to any sleepier, you need to take another look at Sacramento.  It’s not yet a walkable urban paradise, but it’s trending in a good direction.)

Like Omaha, Des Moines seemed to have the pieces to be a good urban place, but work remains to be done.  Less work than is needed in Omaha, but still work.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Cornfields Not Always the Best Ballparks

I love the movie “Field of Dreams”.  Many consider it overly sentimental, but I put it up there with “Bull Durham” as one of my two favorite baseball movies.

Much of the allure of “Field of Dreams” is the setting in an Iowa cornfield.  For the movies, baseball in a cornfield is fine.  But I recently saw several ballgames in a Midwestern cornfield and found it distressing.

Faced with the need for a new ballpark five years ago, the Omaha Triple-A ballclub, now known as the Storm Chasers, left their old location near downtown Omaha to build a new ballpark fifteen miles away.  

Not only is Werner Field remote from Omaha, it’s remote from pretty much everything.  It’s mostly surrounded by cornfields and hayfields.  Except for a row of homes on a ridgeline beyond the rightfield fence, one other residential neighborhood, and a few industrial buildings, the ballpark is four miles from anything.

Nor are there good ways to reach the ballpark except by car.  There’s no transit to the park.  There is a bike lane on the rural highway leading to the park, but the lane hadn’t been cleaned in awhile.  For the three games I watched at the ballpark, I didn’t see a single bicyclist or pedestrian either on their way to the park or going anywhere else.

To be fair, the park may someday be adjoined by other non-agricultural land uses.  There were signs describing the ballpark as the first phase of a development planned to eventually include residential, office, retail, and industrial uses.  And the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area is growing enough, roughly 100,000 between 2000 and 2010 with a similar rate expected to continue, to absorb the new development.

But a good urban plan would have allowed the downtowns to accept 100,000 new people.  And even failing that, there are many cornfields closer to Omaha and adjoining existing development that could have been converted into a ballpark.

Werner Park is the worst kind of drivable suburban sprawl.  Indeed, calling it suburban is a stretch.  It’s drivable rural sprawl.  It’s a nice ballpark, but in a horribly wrong location.

To make the situation worse, there was an available urban alternative.  The park from which the Storm Chasers moved was Rosenblatt Stadium, which also served as the long-time home of the College World Series.  Rosenblatt was aging and a new venue was required.  So the Storm Chasers moved fifteen miles to their new 8,500-seat ballpark in a cornfield.  And a new 24,000-seat ballpark, TD Ameritrade Park, was built in downtown Omaha for the College World Series.

That’s right.  Two largely comparable but separate ballparks, with a combined construction cost of $164 million, were built simultaneously fifteen miles apart.

I asked a number of folks why the functions of the two parks hadn’t been combined.  Two reasons were given.  First, the College World Series would have required the Storm Chasers to take an annual two-week roadtrip.  Second, 24,000 seats are too many for a Triple-A ballclub.

As a former minor league ballclub owner, I understand the latter concern.  If too many seats are available, fans don’t have a reason to make advance purchases.  Instead, they can plan on buying walk-up tickets.  But if they don’t have tickets in hand, they can easily make gameday decisions to skip the game.  It’s the reason that many new Major League ballparks have 40,000 seats, compared to the 55,000-seat stadiums of three decades ago.

So the scheduling and capacity issues are legitimate concerns.  But were they sufficient to justify building two ballparks, one of which is the definition of sprawl?  Not even close.  The issues are challenges to be overcome, not roadblocks.

Schedule-makers must regularly accommodate special scheduling concerns.

And making a ballpark that will function well at 24,000 seats for two weeks and at 10,000 seats for the remainder of the year is a design criterion which architects would love to tackle.  Perhaps the upper sections could be blocked off except during the College World Series and a second, less grand, entrance provided for the Triple-A games.

As an architect friend noted when I told him about the dual ballparks, “I understand the constraints, but they don’t justify that solution.”

And the rewards for solving the challenges would have been significant.  Attendance for the Storm Chasers would likely have been higher in downtown Omaha.  Watching a ballgame would become available to those who rely on transit.  And the streetlife around TD Ameritrade Park would receive a boost.  It’s a nice neighborhood, but one that would have benefited from several thousand Triple-A ball fans going to and from 72 ballgames a year.

For “Field of Dreams”, baseball in a cornfield is fine.  But for real life ballclub in a world where we should be more aware of using our assets wisely, it’s a huge blunder.  In baseball terms, Werner Park was a whiff.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

A Midwest Perspective on Urbanism

Urbanism comes in many flavors.  An urbanist strategy that works in the North Bay would likely be nonsense in London and even worse in Mumbai.  The geographies are different, the economies are different, the histories are different, and the people are different.  One of the best ways to study the universal truths of urbanism is to study urbanism in different places.

The dwindling days of this summer will give me the opportunity to look at urbanism in a new region.

In the sixty years of my life, I’ve seen too little of the Midwest.  I’ve visited the larger cities, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Cleveland, but I haven’t traveled into the heart of the Great Plains.  The deficiency will soon be addressed when I travel to Nebraska and Iowa.

I’m intrigued by the cities of the Great Plains.  Growing up on the west coast and having traveled often along the east coast, the geographical justifications of most cities are evident.  San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Boston, New York City, Charleston.  It takes only a cursory look at a map to understand why those cities grew where they did.

But the origins of the cities of the Great Plains are less evident.  The geographical advantages of Omaha over other Nebraska locations aren’t particularly evident.  Yes, Omaha is alongside the Missouri River, but so are many sites in Nebraska.  Omaha is where it is because of the decision of a railroad engineer, followed by the successful huckstering of early developers and cemented by a later aura of inevitability.

That type of civic history is fascinating, especially when the importance of railroads has faded.  I look forward to looking around some Midwest cities, trying to get a grasp on their past and their prospects for the future.

But going into a region unprepared isn’t an effective way to learn.  A tour guide is valuable.  With the nom de plume of the Urbanophile, Aaron Renn writes about urbanism for a national audience.  However, his roots are deeply in the Midwest.  And his perspectives about cities are influenced by those roots.

Late in 2012, he summarized his beliefs about cities.  I share many of his thoughts, although he expresses them better than I could have.  But some, such as his belief that urbanism has its roots in God, have a Midwest flavor that I don’t share.  (Personally, I think that humanism leads to urbanism just as surely as God does.)

And there is a self-reliance flavor to his comments that I share, but don’t put as front and center in my thinking.  It’s a sense that Midwesterners don’t expect anything to be given to them, but must work for every step forward.

A brief selection of Renn’s thoughts includes:

“There is no one-size-fits-all model of urban success.”

“Cities are also where the poor come to become middle class.”

“Building on assets is a strategy about defending the past, not embracing the future.”

“We must boldly re-imagine the possibilities of what a city can be and bravely identify what works today and what doesn’t.”

If your day permits, I recommend reading his entire post.  I know that I’ll review many of the Urbanophile’s posts before I leave for the Midwest.  It’s only reasonable to take advantage of an experienced tour guide.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)