Edge City
Page 47
Downtown Los Angeles
Then, marching straight west from downtown, toward the ocean, there is:
Mid-Wilshire
Miracle Mile
Beverly Hills-Century City
West Los Angeles
North of this central Los Angeles County corridor, on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains, is the San Fernando Valley, which includes, from east to west:
Burbank-North Hollywood
Sherman Oaks-Van Nuys
Warner Center-West Valley
North of the San Fernando Valley, there is the Santa Clarita Valley, with:
Valencia
West of the San Fernando Valley, toward the ocean, in Ventura County, is:
Ventura—the Coastal Plain
Heading down the coast, to the south, back in Los Angeles County, there is:
Marina Del Rey—Culver City
The Los Angeles International Airport area (LAX/El Segundo)
The South Bay—Torrance—Carson—San Diego Freeway area A Downtown Long Beach
Continuing down the coast, crossing into Orange County, there is:
North Orange County (Fullerton—La Habra—Brea)
Central Orange County (Disneyland-Los Angeles Rams Stadium—the Santa Ana I-5 Freeway—Santa Ana—Anaheim—Garden Grove)
Western Orange County (Westminster-Huntington Beach)
The John Wayne Airport area (including South Coast Plaza—Costa Mesa as well as the bulk of Irvine)
Newport Beach—Fashion Island (also largely Irvine)
Irvine Spectrum
South Orange County (San Clemente—Laguna Niguel)
Heading inland from downtown Los Angeles, to the east, up against the San Gabriel Mountains, is the San Gabriel Valley portion of Los Angeles County, with:
Pasadena—North Valley
South Valley—Covina
The Inland Empire comprises San Bernardino County and, to its south, Riverside County, which includes:
Ontario Airport—Rancho Cucamonga
San Bernardino
Riverside
MEMPHIS
Downtown
The Poplar Corridor—East Memphis
The Airport area
MIAMI
Downtown Miami (including Brickell Avenue)
The Airport area (including west toward the Doral Country Club and the Miami Free Zone)
Coral Gables
MILWAUKEE
Downtown
Wauwatosa-Mayfair
Brookfield-Blue Mound Road
MINNEAPOLIS
Downtown Minneapolis
Bloomington-Edina (southern I-494 west of the airport)
Minnetonka (western I-494)
Downtown St. Paul
NEW YORK
NEW JERSEY
Bergen County
Fort Lee
Paramus-Montvale
Mahwah
Hudson County
The Meadowlands/Hoboken area
The Newark International Airport-Jersey City area
Essex County
Downtown Newark
Morris County
Whippany—Parsippany—Troy Hills (“287 & 80”)
Morristown
Somerset, Union, and Hunterdon Counties
The Bridgewater Mall area (“287 & 78”)
Middlesex County
The Woodbridge area
The Amtrak Metropark area
Mercer County
U.S. 1-Princeton
Downtown Trenton
NEW YORK STATE
Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan
Downtown Manhattan (the Wall Street area)
Westchester County
The White Plains area
The Tarrytown area
Purchase-Rye
LONG ISLAND
Nassau County
Great Neck—Lake Success—North Shore
Mitchell Field-Garden City
Suffolk County
Route 110—Melville
Hauppauge
CONNECTICUT
Fairfield County
The Stamford-Greenwich area
The Westport and I-95 north area
PENNSYLVANIA
The Lehigh Valley (Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton)
ORLANDO
Downtown
Maitland Center
The Airport area
The University of Central Florida area
PHILADELPHIA
Downtown
King of Prussia
Willow Grove-Warminster (the Pennsylvania Turnpike and 611).
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
PHOENIX
Phoenix is the first major American municipality formally to recognize for planning purposes that it is made up of Edge Cities—in local parlance, urban villages. Three within the political boundaries of Phoenix have hit critical mass: Downtown, Uptown, and the Camelback Corridor. Nine are planned within that municipality alone. In this listing, planned Edge Cities that have not really begun to emerge are indicated with a clear circle. Edge Cities are also emerging in such adjacent areas as Scottsdale, Tempe, and Mesa.
Downtown Phoenix
Uptown-the Central Avenue Corridor
The Camelback Corridor
Scottsdale
The Metro Center Mall area (North Mountain)
The 44th Street-Sky Harbor Airport area
Tempe
Mesa-Chandler
Deer Valley
Alhambra
Maryvale
South Mountain
Paradise Valley
PITTSBURGH
Downtown
The Penn Lincoln Parkway-Airport area
The East Side (especially Monroeville)
PORTLAND, OREGON
Downtown
Beaverton-Tigard-Tualatin
The Sunset Freeway Corridor
THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NORTH CAROLINA
Downtown Raleigh
Downtown Durham
Downtown Chapel Hill
The Research Triangle Park area
SACRAMENTO
Downtown
The Arden Fair Mall—California Expo State Fairgrounds area
The Natomas area (between Downtown and the airport)
ST. LOUIS
Downtown
Clayton
The Westport Plaza area
The Highway 40—Chesterfield Village area (west of I-270)
ST. PETERSBURG
Downtown
The Gateway-Howard Frankland Bridge area
SAN ANTONIO
Downtown
The Airport area
The South Texas Medical Center Complex area
The Austin Highway area
SAN DIEGO
Downtown
Kearney Mesa
• Mission Valley
North City (including University Town Center, Torrey Pines, Sorrento Center, East Gate Technology Center, and the like)
The North Coast area (Encinitas to Oceanside along I-5)
The I-15 North area (Miramar Naval Air Station to Escondido)
SAN FRANCISCO
Downtown San Francisco
North
San Rafael (Marin County)
East
Downtown Oakland (including Lake Merritt)
Berkeley (including Emeryville)
Farther East (the I-680 Corridor)
Concord
Contra Costa Centre-Pleasant Hill BART
Walnut Creek
Danville-Bishop Ranch-San Ramon
Dublin—Hacienda—Pleasanton—Livermore
South
The Daly City—northern San Mateo County area
The San Francisco International Airport area
The Redwood City—southern San Mateo County area
The Sunnyvale—northern Silicon Valley area
The San Jose—central Silicon Valley area
It is a matter of some dispute whether San Jose could genuinely have been considered an
urban area thirty years ago, which is why it is listed here as part of an Edge City.
SEATTLE
Downtown Seattle
Bellevue
“The Technology Corridor”—Interstate 405 north
The I-90 Corridor (Mercer Island and east)
South Center—Kent Valley
Downtown Tacoma
TAMPA
Downtown
The West Shore—Airport area
The Tampa Parkway—Interstate 75 area
TORONTO
Downtown
North
Midtown—Yorkville
North York—North Yonge
West
Mississauga
The Downsview Airport area
The Etobicoke-427 area
East
The Don Valley Parkway—401 area
The Markham-404 area
The Eglington—Don Mills area
Scarborough
WASHINGTON
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Downtown
MARYLAND
Montgomery County
Bethesda—Chevy Chase—Upper Wisconsin Avenue D.C.
Silver Spring
The Democracy Boulevard—North Bethesda—White Flint Mall area (I-270 and the Beltway)
Rockville—I-270
Shady Grove—I-270
Gaithersburg-Germantown—I-270
Howard County
Columbia
Prince George’s County
Lanham-Landover-Largo (the Beltway and Route 50 east near the New Carrollton Metro and the Amtrak Metroliner station)
Laurel—I-95 north
Bowie New Town
PortAmerica—southern I-95
VIRGINIA
Arlington County
Rosslyn-Ballston
Crystal City
Alexandria
Old Town
The I-395 Corridor
The Eisenhower Valley area
Fairfax County
Tysons Corner
Merrifield (the Beltway and Route 50 west)
The Fairfax Center—Fair Oaks Mall area (I-66 and Route 50)
The Reston-Herndon-Dulles Access Road area
The Dulles International Airport—Route 28 area
Loudoun County
The Greater Leesburg—Route 7 area
Prince William County
Gainesville
The following numbers were provided by The Office Network in Houston. They compare the relative size of office markets in seventeen metropolitan areas selected by the author. The first number is for the old downtowns—the central business districts. The second is for the area outside those CBDs—i.e., in Edge Cities or emerging Edge Cities. These markets were chosen as roughly representative of the broad middle range—between 20 million and 150 million square feet of office space total. All figures are in millions of square feet. They include buildings under construction. Figures are for the first quarter of 1991. Due to rounding, the two columns may not equal the total. All figures copyright © 1991, The Office Network®. Reprinted with permission.
12
THE WORDS
Glossary of a New Frontier
THE BUILDERS of Edge City—the developers and their cohorts—are the biggest gossips since federal prosecutors, and for the same reason: they are constantly trying to figure out what makes human beings tick.
As professional gossips, they have evolved their own code.
It includes:
ACTIVE WATER FEATURE: Any man-made body of moving water out of which you are not supposed to drink. A waterfall. A fountain. See Passive Water Feature.
AMENITIES (also, AMENITY PACKAGE): Frills. E.g., trees. An Amenity Package is that collection of all nonessential and not readily justifiable elements in a development which, it is hoped, if sold creatively enough, can be transformed from an obvious drag on earnings into an inducement for a tenant to pay more rent than he might do otherwise. E.g., day-care centers, jogging trails, subsidized restaurants, a concierge, picnic tables. See Quality of Life.
AMPLE FREE PARKING: The touchstone distinction between Edge City and the old downtown.
ANIMATED SPACE: A place in which an attempt is made to overcome barrenness and sterility by the addition of anything that suggests life, especially flags. In use: “Jeez, can’t you do something to animate that space?” See also Amenities, Quality of Life, and Programmed Space.
ATTITUDE, AN: A negative mindset. Thought to be the source of most, and see also, Situations.
BACK DOOR: The first thing a smart developer looks for. His Back Door is his ultimate fall-back position, should the worst possible Situation materialize. No matter how grand a scheme he proposes, a savvy operator has first calculated the minimum he has to do to survive. In use: “We had a Back Door. If all else failed, we could just perc the damn lots and go.” The Back Door is most especially what you use when you are faced with, and see also, Five Thousand Mexicans Knocking on the Door of the Alamo.
BEAUTIFUL BUILDING, A: One that is fully leased. Oldest joke in the developer’s lexicon. Not really a joke.
BEAUTY CONTEST: An attempt to inject Quality of Life into an Edge City in which government zoning officials offer a developer higher densities—and thereby profits—than would otherwise be politically palatable in exchange for such concessions as, and see also, Amenity Packages, Quality Statements, and Active Water Features.
BILLBOARD BUILDING: A building designed to announce the presence and enhance the image of the corporation whose name appears prominently at its top. Structures like this are especially common in areas with laws that restrict communication via real billboards or other large signs. A Billboard Building can be curious-looking because it is not designed to face the access road by which a person actually reaches the office. It faces out on the freeway, where the maximum number of passersby will receive the message at high speed. Also, Signature Building.
BLANKS: What residential developers call land. A blank is a lot on which a house can be built. As in blank slate. But more important, it is a basic conceptual unit. Land is not a meaningful commodity to a residential builder until it has been reduced to Blanks by a process that includes taking the entire amount of land available, subtracting that on which homes cannot be built (because of provisions for parks, floodplains, roads, shopping centers, and the like), and dividing the remainder by the total number of homes the developer can get zoning for. Not until land has been translated into Blanks can it be entered into the play of a Deal. When residential developers and builders think about land, they do not run the numbers through their heads in acres, as farmers do, or in square feet, as office-space builders do. In fact, if a builder were to bid, say, $30,000 on a Blank, it is of relatively minor importance whether the Blank is 0.5 acres or 5.0 acres, since it represents only one house. The actual size of the Blank is significant only when it is so unusually large or small as to offer major constraints or opportunities. Note: Blank is used especially to refer to “raw” land as opposed to “improved” land. This means that the building lot has been subdivided and zoned, but no Hard Costs have been incurred, such as those for sewers, water, power, phone lines, or roads, nor most Soft Costs, such as, and see also, Carry.
BLUE WATER: The stuff you put into the fountain of your mall to offset the unsightliness of the pennies that people throw in, as well as the grout that washes off. It is this fluid you then discover kids will stick a straw into and drink, as you watch, horrified, having utterly no idea of its level of toxicity. See Situation.
BRICK-SNIFFERS: Renovators and gentrifiers. Also called White Painters. How builders refer to those young couples who, when they rehabilitate an old place, sandblast all the plaster off, right back to the brick, frequently causing structural damage in the process. They then ritualistically stick their noses right up against this brick and inhale deeply, immediately after which they paint everything white except the wood that they varnish.
BRING TO THE TABLE, TO: To demonstrate an i
ntent to be taken seriously as a player in a Deal. In use: “What can he Bring to the Table?” The etymology is that of poker, in which, to belly up to the table, one must show the color of one’s money. But in an Edge City Deal, a player may also be regarded as having gravitas if, for example, he can Bring to the Table a specialized knowledge of the market, or an unusual facility with legislative or zoning bodies, or an influence on federal funding authorities.
BUZZ THE NUBS: Closely trim the grass.
CAMPUSLIKE SETTING: What every office building in an Edge City is invariably said to have.