design:retail - July 2014 - (Page 40)

shopping with paco 040 A Great Place to Live...? PACO UNDERHILL CEO & FOUNDER ENVIROSELL p.underhill@envirosell.com O U R E N V I RO S E L L he ad q u a r te r s i s spread across three floors in a gaudy, late-19th-century Flatiron building in New York. We have an old-fashioned manual elevator, and my corner oﬃce has decadent wood paneling and a working ﬁreplace. The windows rattle in the wind and, for reasons I couldn't begin to comprehend, some of the toilets ﬂush with hot water. The building across the street was the ﬁrst home of Lord & Taylor and, today, the retail space on the ﬁrst ﬂoor is the new concept store for Brooks Brothers. I can stand in my window and see half a dozen stores I've worked on. I love being in the middle of the action. Walking to work, walking home, at lunchtime, out for a coﬀee; it is constant, unrelenting retail. Having an oﬃce in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul might be a tad more exciting, but I'll settle for the cleaner air and the people-watching here, which is much better. Until the birth of mail-order and its Internet extension, commerce has not been able to escape physical density. Even as our housing habits changed and we moved from cities and villages to the suburbs, physical shopping has still been about the reconstruction of the urban experience. Strip malls were villages; shopping malls were city main streets. If we make the assumption that physical retail is here to stay, looking at the evolution of urbanization is key to being able to project our retail future. Recently, I drove through the center of New Haven, Conn., home to Yale University and all of the ancillary business driven by the presence of a world-class educational and research institution. New Haven has a lovely New England downtown with the campus, JULY 2014 DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM civic buildings, churches and retail surrounding a town green. There is a charming mix of studentfocused retail, coﬀee shops, inexpensive restaurants, galleries and theaters. In that little part of New Haven, people eat, shop and sleep; the street is a happy place, animated by bodies. While its 19th-century historic parts are charming, the rest of the city is deeply troubled. Four blocks over is a 21st-century wasteland of new construction, hospitals, oﬃce buildings and parking garages. No retail. The streetfronts are blank walls and office windows. No retail. The premise is that someone drives into urban density, parks their car, goes to work, eats in the internal cafeteria and then drives home. What's really missing is housing. When we do mixed-use development, we provide for modern living; and the street level is about goods and services. Retail often is the best indicator of the strength of a community. Healthy stores mean healthy people. It is ironic that New Haven hosts one of the great schools of architecture, and yet its array of new urban development looks good in conceptual drawings and cybercreated ﬂy-bys, but at street-level, it looks barren, lonely and dirty. Our work with Millennials suggests that we have a generation that likes cities and the convenience of hassle-free living, which often means car-free living. They don't care for big-box stores and like the idea of living small. Many live in non-traditional units or, better-stated, have roommates. The idea of walking to work appeals to them. They like the proximity of other people. Working from a coffee shop is attractive, because they get to see other people, while at the same time have a respectful public form of privacy. Yes, they will go online, especially for commodity products, but they also love the familiarity of local shopping. They like small cities and are attracted to the idea of the university town's activities and culture. Urbanism and urban retail are part of a national solution to improve the quality of life we have in North America. How many of our major store chains are wrestling with getting to a smaller format? Target, Walmart, Walgreens and Oﬃce Depot, just to name a few. We need more. We need a new generation of plug-in retail pieces that ﬁt into modernist urban planning. New Haven could be a great place to live. It just needs to pay attention. PACO UNDERHILL IS THE FOUNDER OF ENVIROSELL AND AUTHOR OF THE BOOKS "WHY WE BUY" AND "WHAT WOMEN WANT." HE SHARES HIS RETAIL AND CONSUMER INSIGHTS WITH DESIGN:RETAIL IN THIS BI-ISSUE COLUMN. Photo by WOODRUFF/BROWN ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY http://www.DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of design:retail - July 2014

design:retail - July 2014
Contents
Editor’s Note
Show Talk
On Trend
We Love This!
Designer Picks
Innovation
Postcard
Inspirations
Have You Heard?
Mingle
Shopper Insights
Shopping With Paco
Walmart
Macy's
Student Window Challenge New York
Fixture Leaders
Products
Backstory

design:retail - July 2014