Category — Sustainability

Take this four-story building at the corner of N 45th St and Stone Way N in Wallingford. The corner business here is a ‘Desert Sun’ tanning salon. Now, I’m not really the target market for tanning salons (I prefer the ‘unnaturally green’ tint I get from working in front of a computer monitor all day), but when I look at this I have a hard time believing that a suntanning shop in a fairly prominent location really adds much to Wallingford’s ‘walkability’.

But like I said, I’m not the target audience.

And in the larger scheme of things adding a business like a suntanning parlor to Wallingford which already has lots of services within walking distance (Wallingford has a very respectable walkability score of 92), adding a suntanning shop probably isn’t such a big deal. But what if this were a new corner business in a neighborhood such as Wedgwood that is starting to increase its supply of new development, but is also a neighborhood that needs to make sure that it properly leverages new development in order to bring in the kind of businesses that can really help with neighborhood walkability.

Personally, I think this is a huge part of our neighborhood density planning that we neglect - we don’t focus on helping encourage walkable businesses within the neighborhoods that could use them. And, I think that opening up incentives for developers could help address this issue.

For example, in Wedgwood our walking score is a ‘62′ (which means that you can get some services by walking, but for others you’ll need to drive), and adding a tanning salon like this wouldn’t help us move this number up.  So, why not encourage walkable services that our neighborhood lacks by providing incentives for a developer to bring in businesses that positively add to the sustainability/walkability of a neighborhood. This will probably mean charging less for rental space to support these businesses, but I’m sure that offering zoning/tax tradeoffs could make that ’pencil out’ for the developer.

Anyway, there’s also another way to skin this cat, and that’s working with the developer directly. When a few neighbors and I were negotiating with a developer on what we wanted in their mixed-use project planned for Wedgwood, we weren’t able to actually get them to commit to specific businesses (we asked for services like a restaurant, hardware store, bakery, Trader Joes, etc…), but we were able to agree on what couldn’t go in their spots.

• No check cashing, sun tanning or pawn shops will be allowed in the building
• No national chain which is in the same business as any locally owned non-national business located within 1/2 mile of the project will be permitted.
• Retail signage will not include any back lit plastic molded signs. (Believe it or not, this small thing actually eliminates some of the cheesier franchises).

So hopefully when the building does go up and shops come in, we’ll be able to bump that 62 up a little.