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Kelruss t1_j32zs80 wrote

Reply to comment by PawtucketPatriot in The Arcade - Providence RI. Said to be the oldest shopping mall in America. Only a couple downstairs storefronts were occupied. by quinntronix

One problem is that it’s not really near anything interesting. Like, what reason would you have to take a shortcut from Weybosset to Westminster that can’t be solved by just cutting through parking lots.

You can envision a situation where Arcade Street is a public way with shops that pull people out of KP, through the Arcade, with the parking from Weybosset to Dyer replaced by green space, which would connect you to the parks by the river that would take you all the way down to the Van Leesten and the businesses on South Main, but it would take an incredible amount of energy and power to develop something like that.

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huron9000 t1_j386puf wrote

It’s smack dab in the middle of downtown. That should be the interesting enough- the street life, the commerce, the architecture. The architecture, at least is mostly still there…

The reason to cut through would be to buy and/or eat something from one of the small businesses that used to populate the Arcade.

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Kelruss t1_j39ak0e wrote

> It’s smack in the middle of downtown.

Geographically (maybe), but not socially. Like, it used to be the case that there were more people when it was surrounded by offices and right across from the Fleet/Bank of America offices. But almost all of the buildings around it have tons of vacancies, and it’s centered in a bunch of parking. It’s not a “place” so to speak, it’s just a building out of the way.

Like, if you think about how people flow Downtown, they don’t flow east along Exchange and Weybosset. They mostly flow southwest down Washington and Westminster, south towards PPAC, or north toward the mall and train station. With the CIC and the beer garden and the pedestrian bridge, that’s a new destination.

But the Arcade is just sort of tangential to all of these flows, just a little too out of the way to attract the foot traffic it needs to thrive. That’s not its fault, of course, it’s just the reality after years of Downtown being hollowed out.

It’s possible to imagine a future where it’s the focal point of a journey with some creative placemaking, but I don’t think that’s necessarily what a lot of its neighbors care about.

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