COMMENT OF THE DAY: MIXED USES GOTTA MIX “When did adding a strip mall next to an office building qualify as mixed-use? Just like the law, are we going to have to parse out if a development is just a literal mixed-use property (as in there are two possible uses of the land on it) or if it’s in the spirit of mixed-use? Do skyscrapers downtown qualify as mixed-use due to the retail in the tunnel and the public space they add by having a pedestrian plaza outside? I guess I should have realized that the ‘Campus-like Mixed-use’ oxymoron is really just . . . well, moronic.” [DNAguy, commenting on Headlines: Houston’s Bilingual Cinema; Galveston’s Holiday Weekend Crowding]
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I completely agree. As it doesn’t include any residential space, it’s already pushing the definition. But setting a few detatched restaurants across the parking lot? Not cutting it to call it mixed use. By that standard, the corporate campus I worked in with cafeterias inside the actual office buildings would qualify, too. Perhaps moreso. But neither do anything to advance the goals of mixed use development.
The irony is that all of Houston is “Mixed Use” in the grand scheme of things.
I’ve got a better idea. Rather than piss and moan about what qualifies as “mixed use”, why don’t we simply ban the term “mixed use? None of the people clamoring for “mixed use” would ever actually live in an apartment above a noisy bar anyway, and the retail that would locate on the ground floor of your “mixed use” midrise is the same retail that you currently assail in Ainbinder strip centers…check cashing store, nail salon, cell phone store, and Starbucks…if you’re lucky.
The industry-standard term to describe the layout of the project in question would have been “multi-use”.