Seattle's Malls: Northgate Mall & Crossroads Mall

Something great arrived in the email today, a very timely item given the discussion on Park Lane redevelopment.  A roundup of Seattle-area malls, bringing up some I left out.

Crossroads is an old mall situated in Bellevue, a booming city just across Lake Washington from Seattle.  A truly suburban affair, Crossroads is an unassuming sight from the outside and might be easy to pass over.  Once inside, however, you are treated to a bustling scene.  Crossroads has many strengths:  its International food court, drawing on all the different cultures which have located in the Seattle area.  Its stage and regular live music, community theater, and improv performances.  A branch of the library.  A supermarket.  This is a mall, make no mistake:  It has a drive-through Starbucks, a Bed Bath & Beyond, Michaels craft store, Circuit City.  But inside the walls of Crossroads is a sense of community not found replicated in many other malls.

Northgate, the main mall in the story, is the country's oldest mall.  Currently part of Simon Property Group, it is just about done with a major overhaul which has added a bunch of new stores.  The district around Northgate is going through some interesting changes, densing up and becoming more urban.  Just across the street from Northgate is a multi-story complex featuring a Target, Best Buy, and GI Joe's Sports.  It is deviod of "softer", community and cultural features, however.  The author argues that a more successful Northgate expansion would have included cues from Crossroads.

This is a lot of what I mean when I call for "districts not malls".  In the Park Lane plan the soft attractions are the hotel, the fountains and the incorporation of existing neighborhood elements into the corridors - that "reaching out" approach to plug in and expand the neighborhood and strengthen its corridors.  Still, Park Lane as it was could have become a Crossroads, in the right hands.

At the end of the day a mall, like everything else in the property development world, is there to make money for its investors.  When these things truly shine, is when they can do it looking good and serving as model assets for the community.