Editorial: The Loop now looks better than the Mag Mile. Are there lessons from New York’s Fifth Avenue?

Christmas shopping on Michigan Avenue is just not the fun it used to be.

The malaise that has overtaken the Magnificent Mile has been one of the most important Chicago stories of 2022, but the situation on what long has been the Midwest’s premiere shopping street actually is far worse than many people realize.

The north end of the street, for so long its most prestigious stretch, is on life support.

The massive building that once housed a flagship Borders bookstore (which closed in 2011) has suffered through a calamitous decade. And the virus of vacant storefronts that infected the 800 block has spread across the street to the Water Tower Mall, once the destination of choice for every last-minute Christmas shopper looking for fun. Now not so much.

We’ve written before about how much energy has moved from the Mag Mile to the West Loop, where the hip kids all shop, eat and drink. But as the holiday shows cranked up in the Loop this month, bringing back crowded sidewalks, a case was being made that the Loop, long the scrappier poor relation of the Magnificent Mile, was actually doing the better of the two districts. The Loop, which has made much more of a post-pandemic comeback, especially in its northern half, now has the more viable mix of draws.

Macy’s has hung on at the former Marshall Field’s State Street flagship, even as it abandoned Water Tower, with disastrous consequences for the mall. The successful State Street Target, now in the old Carson Pirie Scott building, surprisingly has become a favorite of Instagrammers, beguiled by its architecture.

Another notable recent data point, heralded by the Chicago Loop Alliance, is the imminent return to State Street of the upper-end discount retailer Saks Off Fifth, an outlet of the Toronto-based Hudson’s Bay, which has been closed since 2019. And, of course, the long-running and justly beloved Christkindlmarket in the Loop has been so packed with people this year, entry often has been limited.

Thanks to the live entertainment sector, more than 10,000 people typically head into the Loop on peak nights. Some of them eat, drink and shop. Many more of them pay to park.

Michigan Avenue, traditionally reliant on upscale retail rather than the arts, does not have that built-in draw. Never before has its dependence on traditional shopping looked like more of a liability.

The causes include a lack of public safety (or the perception of it), the loss of key retail tenants, the loss of international tourists, structural changes in how we shop and the dystopian sight of police vehicles flashing blue lights in the middle of the avenue. But Michigan Avenue also is paying a price for failing to adapt to the changing times, its high rents traditionally inhospitable to restaurants and its longtime elegance allowed to sag.

Solutions include attention to the Drake Hotel, a key northern anchor; the refining of the long-standing idea to better link the avenue to the lake, perhaps by a sweeping footbridge; more street-level dining; cops on foot or horses rather than in cars; and better entertainment options that go beyond cheesy, pop-up “experiences.”

The temporary casino might help too. Or not. It depends on how well security is handled and how the casino markets its games. Perhaps it will do so well the merchants will lament the gambling emporium’s eventual move west. Time will tell.

The problem with big-city retailing is not, of course, limited to Chicago.

We’ve seen many of the same issues in Seattle and on New York’s storied Fifth Avenue, where Mayor Eric Adams this week announced a plan to transform the street into a pedestrian-centered boulevard running from Bryant Park at 42nd Street to Central Park at 59th Street. The idea is to make the street a less congested and safer destination for pedestrians and cyclists, encouraging them to take mass transportation. The plan calls for more trees, wider sidewalks, more green space and better lighting.

We’re all for safer cycling and walking and we’re pro-mass transit. But we’re skeptical of too many pedestrian plazas in big, cold-weather, high-crime cities. As Steve Cuozzo wrote in the New York Post: “For a look at the damage these asphalt, so-called oases cause, you need go no farther than Times Square, where they took root in 2009.”

Cuozzo, a longtime real estate writer, argues that junkies and hustlers in cartoon costumes have taken over many of those New York spaces, to the detriment of surrounding businesses and exacerbating the very problems they were supposed to solve. Chicago had such a dalliance with State Street some years ago. Readmitting cars in a shared environment proved crucial to the street’s renaissance.

Cuozzo has a good point. He’s right when he points out that the sidewalks on streets such as Fifth Avenue and Michigan Avenue are supposed to be crowded on holiday weekends. That’s part of their appeal. And the lack of crowds on the Magnificent Mile this season is a harbinger of a real problem.

Michigan Avenue needs a new, bold plan before the damage flowing down most everybody’s favorite Chicago street becomes irreversible. . It should be a mayoral priority in 2023.

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