Downtown Kalamazoo Observations

1.       The two major business areas of downtown Kalamazoo are Burdick Street and Haymarket District. Burdick Street is customer-friendly environment with a nicely-decorated and well-maintained landscape. Burdick Street is a one-to-two lane street with wide sidewalks, encouraging more customers to walk down the street. Along the sidewalks, there were many benches and tables, which can be good and bad for businesses, according to Robert Gibbs article, “What Main Street can Learn from The Mall.” It was mostly two-story buildings along the street, but it was mostly offices on the second floor due to very few advertisement signs on the second floor. This indicates that most of the business takes place on the first floor. There were a few generators along the street including a theater and many high-tech, modern-looking buildings. The street was made mostly of incubators retail stores. It was mostly clothing and beauty stores along Burdick Street, which can be unappealing to the male population.  The Haymarket district is very different. Haymarket district is a traffic-friendly environment with less sidewalk space. This part of downtown is not customer-friendly since it was dirty and poorly maintained. This district can be unappealing to the general population because there were no benches and tables and the building were older compared to the ones on Burdick Street.  It was mostly restaurants, clothing, and banks, which attracts to the general population. An effective generator in the Haymarket district is the Rave Movie Theater.

2.       The three recommendations I propose to help improve the downtown is to reduce the number of benches and tables on Burdick Street, clean up Haymarket District, and promote business between East Michigan Street and the Rave Movie Theater. I recommend reducing the number of benches and tables is to encourage shoppers to explore Burdick Street. Cleaning up Haymarket District is crucial because it is a great way to attract customers to the businesses in Haymarket District. Last, I strongly advice businesses to open up along Portage Street, where the Rave Movie Theater is, in order to make the movie theater’s ‘generator status’ more effective.

3.       “This is not the kind of question that planners and architects often ask themselves. They tend to see streets and sidewalks strictly as a civic realm, a social environment where people meet and interact, and they tend to favor the sorts of attractive sidewalks and streetscapes that seem to promote sociability.” (What Main Street can Learn from The Mall). Burdick Street strongly supports this statement, because Burdick Street is very appealing (tables, benches, decorations, etc) and discourages customer from exploring.