The problem is businesses have a hard time believing that folks will support them without at least traffic moving by their store front. I don't think there is even close to 100 parking space that could be accommodated on a K Street if it was opened to cars without sacrificing the sidewalk areas. Could the City spend more time on J and L then K Street? At least they already have traffic. Some the urban form and buildings on those streets need just as much help.

Except that light-rail ruins your fantasy. I live in Midtown and own a business in Midtown and ride my bike every where. Midtown succeeds without the 'aid' of a pedestrianized street. I agree that bikes should be included in the mix -but along with slow moving traffic, not in place of it. Pedestrians have been given K Street Mall and look -they don't like it.

Knee jerk implies action without deliberation. er.. I think we've had many years to think and observe. The amount of traffic likely to run on K will hardly generate congestion- come on.

I beg to differ about foot traffic. If given the choice of foot traffic vs vehicular traffic most retailers will pick the cars. Now I am not saying it should be on or the other. They need both. K Street brings foot traffic 40 hours a week but its not good enough as your wrote. It needs more traffic day and night.

My point is perception rules the day and if people cannot see store fronts from the predominant form of traffic it makes if extremely difficult to attract retail uses and keep them. Ask a retail broker and they will tell you the same thing. I would love to have K Street remain a ped. and transit mall with bikes added to the mix, but it K Street needs all modes to succeed. A healthy anchor on the West end would help too.

No, you're exactly right, I was very irritated by some of the questions--like the one that asks which half of K Street you would rather see used as a test section, or "no preference," with no option to say "don't test any of it." I wrote a nice long essay (as I often do) on why bringing back cars was a bad idea, and what to do instead, but who knows what they're going to include in the final report?

Storefronts are vacant because the owners of the property couldn't give a damn about retail use--they want to consolidate enough property to sell it to a high-rise developer. In the meantime they let their buildings decay, they're a tax write-off for other investments so there is no reason to keep the buildings tenanted or improved.

There aren't "crappy shops on K Street," most of the shops are vacant--or there is no place to put a shop, because the buildings are mostly office buildings with no retail storefronts anymore. Most of them were retail at one point, now they are state agencies. The ones that are vacant are vacant because they are owned by speculators who want to demolish them entirely. They don't want to spend a penny improving structures that they want to demolish when their magical payday comes.

It doesn't matter how much you pretty up a storefront, a vacant building or office building isn't a destination for shoppers no matter how clean and prettied-up. The streetscape gets re-done every couple of years, to the point where some part of the mall is constantly under construction, but the problem is not the streetscape, it is the vacant buildings adjacent to them! The city is spending several million dollars to re-do the streetscape on 7th/8th, in front of a vacant block of stores where the city kicked out local businesses for a plan that has now utterly collapsed.

Westfield doesn't want to do anything with the mall. It is a write-off to balance against their regional flagship mall in Roseville.

And all of this misses the point that K Street will never work as a stand-in for a suburban mall. It has to offer things that aren't available in the suburbs, or people have no reason to go.

Point of clarification. Streetscapes include the buildings and its relation to the public areas like sidewalks and the street. This goes to my comments about the market on K Street. The people do not feel comfortable in the downtown streetscape. It does not relate to a walkable, enjoyable experience. I agree part of this uneasy feeling is the lack of good ground floor uses that are not typical of suburban shopping destinations. I totally agree with that notion but not by itself. It is both the public and private realms of the street that need improvement. It needs to be done in tandem.

This is no suburb and I think the City has treated not like a suburb nor like what it is....a business district. Part of the success of Ella, Temple and the Citizen is that both have ped and auto traffic. A visible front door for automobiles.

I actually have been to all those Cities and places mentioned. There are numerous and big differences from them and K Street t. Here is a question; name a pedestrian mall in a US city that has two tracks of rail transit down the middle of the street and no vehicular traffic that has succeeded?

Cleanliness and comfort matter, but a cleaned-up vacant building still doesn't draw much foot traffic. Occupied storefronts will mean a business owner has a vested interest in drawing foot traffic, and will facilitate a clean street. Get the tenants FIRST--and the streets become easier to clean, and more importantly, people have a reason to walk there. Easy street activation techniques like bringing more vendors and street musicians (every day, not just for special events) and allowing bikes will draw the public out in the short term for minimal investment.

If people didn't like K Street at least somewhat, there wouldn't be such a hubbub every time people talk about making changes. It's not so much that people like K Street the way it is (with vacant storefronts and state offices, mostly clearing out after 5 PM), but people like the idea of bringing back K Street that even after 40 years we keep trying. My concern is that returning cars to K Street (and, presumably, eliminating rail traffic once again) is hugely expensive, while ideas like better street cleaning (trust me, we agree on this), getting vendors into storefronts, and public busking/vending/bikes are very cheap. In fiscally shaky times like this, easy low-cost solutions should be the first choice, not expensive boondoggles like ripping up the street (AGAIN) for a project that will take years (during which time existing businesses will suffer due to construction nosie and mayhem) for, at most, a few lengths of underutilized street that will block Light Rail trains and put pedestrians at risk.

Auto traffic on the numbered streets allows vehicles close access to most of K Street. People can see the mall from the numbered streets, it is not as though it was entirely closed off--but your theory about auto proximity doesn't hold up when you look at 11th and K. It is the spot on the K Street mall farthest from auto traffic, but it is also the most comfortable and active part of the mall. If you look at work like Kevin Lynch's "The Image of the City," a detailed exploration of how people understand cities, 11th and K is a natural focus and people seem very comfortable there without proximity to auto traffic.

Your points about Ella, Temple and the Citizen only reinforces the fact that traffic on the numbered streets is more than sufficient: these are K Street businesses (aside from the Citizen) served just fine by traffic on numbered streets, actually bringing it onto K Street seems redundant. Ella has no parking, Temple has no parking in front due to its "terrarium," and Temple is driven by foot traffic, not drive-by business (10th Street near J is a nearly impossible place to park.)

I don't claim to be a mind-reader, but Westfield's continued reinvestment and boosterism of the Roseville Galleria, while they allow Downtown Plaza to slip into disrepair and decay, is downright obvious. They should be held to a higher standard--or encouraged to cede the field.