ancient cities

Urban Entertainment Destination
Chicago’s Near North neighborhood. In the space of about a dozen square blocks, there are a number of theatres, bars, restaurants,
hotels, an urban mall, a grocery store, an assortment of shops and stores, and live music venues. Visible in this photo is a Bloomingdale’s
Home store, a banner for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, two restaurants, a Harley-Davidson store, and a movie theatre. Across
the street, just outside the range of the photo, are a furniture store, three hotels, three other restaurants, and two clothing stores.
Source: Eric Mathiasen.
media or entertainment firm, a property developer,
and a local municipality or agency. Media
firms bring to the table a recognizable, global
brand presence and a finely honed marketing
expertise. Their participation is often crucial in
securing support both from large institutional
lenders who are characteristically nervous about
underwriting projects that seem to deviate from
well-established retail models, and from other
prospective tenants who don’t want to go it alone.
This was very much the case with the Times
Square redevelopment in New York City, which
only coalesced after decades of false starts when
the Walt Disney Corporation agreed to renovate
the landmark New Amsterdam Theater on Forty-
Second Street. Real estate companies, most of
whom are veteran shopping mall developers and
managers, have a great deal of knowledge about
and experience with the intricacies of commercial
lease agreements, planning permissions, zoning
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regulations, traffic plans, and other specific aspects
of the land development process. Public partners
are expected to provide financial assistance (subsidies,
tax breaks, and holidays), infrastructure
improvements (sewage and water lines, parking
garages, and highway interchanges and exits), and
ancillary services (security).
Emergence of the Urban Entertainment
Destination in the 1990s
The urban entertainment destination emerged as
an industry trend for three primary reasons.
First, development firms successfully presented it
as a way of reinvigorating a shopping environment
that had increasingly become homogeneous
and boring. This new “entertaining retail” was
guaranteed both to encourage repeat visits and to
increase the total amount of time that consumers
spent on-site. A particular selling point was the