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October 17, 2011
In Yonkers, Shopping for Shoppers
The Wall Street Journal
by Robbie Whelan
From the department of hardly a surprise...
After a slow start, Westchester's Ridge Hill, the massive shopping mall in Yonkers that opened its first stores in the spring, is finally achieving critical mass in occupancy with a flurry of new leases to tenants like Whole Foods Market, the Cheesecake Factory, H&M, Sephora and L.L. Bean.
But the aesthetic and design goals of the developer, Forest City Ratner Cos., remain more elusive.
The plans for the complex that Forest City announced in 2003 for Ridge Hill incorporated elements of the New Urbanist design movement that began in the 1980s. The idea was to mix the 1.3 million square feet of retail in with office, residential and other uses to give the complex the feel of a walkable village.
...But Ridge Hill falls short of being a pleasant enough social destination to meet the definition of a great public space for people to congregate, socialize and actually mingle with other people.
While the Journal calls Ridge Hill's shopping environment a vast improvement over FCRC's Atlantic Terminal mall, it sounds like the suburban equivalent of the Atlantic Center.
For all its planning, the site is still decidedly disconnected from the world around it—a walled fort that, like medieval garrison cities, forbids, aesthetically, rather than inviting entrance.
Posted by eric at October 17, 2011 11:25 AM