Montgomery Plaza: A Missed Paseo

On a recent Friday night, friends and I had drinks at The Modern then dinner and dancing at Gloria's restaurant at the developed Montgomery Plaza. Kimco Developers Inc. developed 46 acres of open-air big box retail, eateries and parking. The old Montgomery Ward retail and catalog order building was a six story behemoth marred by the March 2000 tornado that came through Fort Worth. The developers chose to carve a six story vehicle and pedestrian passage through Montgomery Plaza while Target looms in the distant joined by a vast parking lot. Whenever I go to Montgomery Plaza, I prefer to drive-thru the planned urban drive with twinkling criss-cross lights overhead--I feel like I am in an amusement park than a cosmopolitan city but who cares. After eating we decided to take a stroll to remove ourselves from the pulse of Gloria's. I thought this is going to be a perfect litmus test of the developer's pitch, "a pedestrian friendly urban center." Granted the complex feels empty since most tenants have not completed their interior renovations but the pedestrian walk around the building feels raw and blue. Raw because outside the interior traffic passage, the building forgot to be "urban" instead it's an edge keeping the parking lot at bay. It looks and feels like a strip mall. And blue because the lights overhead are primarily fluorescent or metal halide. But these two flaws are not the worst offenders of missed opportunities but the planned main street to nowhere for pedestrians is an offense.

The desire to take a stroll is hampered by the vast parking lot that separates Montgomery Plaza and the visually connected, Target Super Center and other box retailers. This large, open interstitial space could be a wonderful pedestrian experience replete with benches, paving patterns, grass, shady trees and lights. The infrastructure is there but the design follow-thru was not executed on the part of Kimco Developers Inc. It's a valid reflex not to want to stroll next to parked cars but we spend most of our time around them already. For a parking lot to be an active social space could only keep people around longer to shop and eat--consume. Already there is a small population of an untapped market, the non-office professional i.e. sales reps, insurance agents, care givers and stay-at-home parents who use parking lots as offices and lunch spots within the confines of their parked cars.