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Message: [QUOTE="NJCuse97, post: 4172307, member: 5058"] I would not be surprised and even assume that there [B][I]is[/I][/B] a zoning ordinance that requires street level retail. This is the city's effort to make sure it is maintaining an active and pedestrian friendly streetscape with a better tax base potential. That said, any one of these developers would typically look at the retail as a loss leader (they will have to offer a subsidized lease rate and it may have volatile or high turnover). The apartments above are where they make their money. They are not likely penalized for those spaces being vacant (by the city at least) so they may not care so much. That is of course short sighted as high retail vacancy will affect the perception of the neighborhood and drive down the value of the sub-market and the rents in the building. That said, there is also the potential that a Chucks or other drinking establishment was assumed at planning and then it was realized that this too would drive down the market, so they allow it to remain vacant until the right retailer comes in. Case in point as to how challenging and delicate this can be is my town, where every other storefront is a nail salon, to the point where they had to change the zoning to disallow any further nail salons. You might say that if all of them are still there, the demand must be too, but the downtown is dead due to a lack of diversity in the retail. Zoning has a very hard time mandating types of retail. They would be seen as over-controlling, limiting a capital market, market competition, the options of a developer to fill their space, or the business of the tenant who wants to compete in that neighborhood. It would be seen as "government overreach". I literally have no reason to go to my own downtown, so it remains dead, but there is little that can really be done. [/QUOTE]

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