Downtown Kalamazoo

A Study of Urban Sequences & Activation of the Public Realm

Published in May 2023

Case Study Overview

Downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan bears the scars of 1960s urban renewal, which carved wide, high-speed one-way streets through the city’s core. This approach devastated local businesses and created a pedestrian experience that was both unpleasant and dangerous. The catalyst for this study was the city’s decision to return several one-way streets to two-way traffic. The goal of the work is to repair the street-level experience and reconnect isolated pockets of activity throughout downtown.

Current Status

Using the work produced in this charrette, the city of Kalamazoo was awarded $98 million in local, state, and federal funding to implement concepts from the charrette. Work is currently underway to implement the concepts proposed in the study.

One-Way to Two-Way Street Conversion Plan

Diagram of the street network of downtown Kalamazoo showing existing two-way streets (yellow), future two-way streets (blue), and remaining one-way streets in the short-term (red). The new two-way east-west streets will be transformed from high-speed corridors designed to move cars through downtown into pedestrian-friendly streets designed to attract people to experience the city on foot.

Street Conversion

Downtown Kalamazoo is a place that still bears the scars of Urban Renewal from the 1960s. The most prominent of these are the wide, high-speed, one-way streets that make the pedestrian experience unpleasant and dangerous. These one-way streets impair retail and have resulted in underutilized parking lots and vacant land that cover over half of downtown, leaving wide, empty spaces at the edge of what ought to be dense, framed, downtown streets.

Due to these past choices, walking through the city is an inconsistent experience. The Kalamazoo Mall, Bronson Park, and the denser downtown core along Michigan Avenue are all exciting to traverse on foot. Yet getting to them is difficult because some streets feel unsafe to cross, and it is not always clear from the outside that you are approaching one of these pockets of activity, which are pleasant only once you enter them. Building on these moments, connecting them together, and inviting pedestrians will provide the vibrancy the downtown streets currently lack.

Repairing the Public Realm

The one-way streets in Kalamazoo have enabled cars to move at dangerously high speeds through the city. This creates an unsafe environment for both drivers and pedestrians. Accidents are common, and the retail along these streets suffers from noise pollution and a lack of foot traffic.

Changing to two-way streets calms traffic. On-street parking, regular spacing of street trees, and outdoor dining make sidewalks safe, which attracts pedestrians to support local businesses.

Activating Streets — W. Michigan Avenue

A street-level view of the proposed activation of the public realm on W. Michigan Avenue.

Aerial Photo of Kalamazoo, MI, Circa 1959

This photo illustrates the scale and density of fabric buildings downtown before the one-way streets were imposed on the city.

Historic Context

In 1959, the famed shopping mall designer Victor Gruen was engaged to develop a new plan, ‘‘Kalamazoo 1980.” This dystopian vision proposed converting downtown into a pedestrian mall surrounded by surface parking lots and ringed with a perimeter road. While this vision was never fully realized, the central feature, the nation’s first outdoor pedestrian mall, was created on Burdick Street.

As Burdick closed to cars, the city engaged Urban Renewal-era freeway designers to convert the main streets crossing through downtown from two-way to one-way traffic. The goal of this change, in keeping with national trends, was to facilitate faster movement for automobiles through the city center into growing suburban neighborhoods. Once complete, the one-way streets encouraged speeding traffic, which created a hostile environment for pedestrians and businesses. The pedestrian mall was now isolated and difficult to access. One by one, businesses closed.

Proposed Zoning

The current form-based zoning of downtown Kalamazoo encourages the highest density development at the corner of W. Michigan Avenue and S. Burdick Street. The scale then drops as the zones move out from the core of the city to the surrounding residential areas. This zoning places pressure on historic buildings not currently protected by local historic preservation listings both at W. Michigan Avenue and S. Burdick Street as well as surrounding Bronson Park. The unprotected historic structures are at risk because the allowable height in the current D1 zone incentivizes the demolition of existing buildings and construction of replacements that would damage the current character and vibrancy of these areas.

To further strengthen the core of downtown and create an ordinance that supports and preserves the established height and scale of the historic retail corridors, this plan proposes a change in district methodology that will be applied to the current form-based zoning. The current zoning allows for unlimited height at the core of the city and “steps down” in height and intensity as downtown gets closer to the surrounding neighborhoods. The new proposal limits heights in the historic core to two-to-five stories, then allows increased height and density in areas immediately adjacent to the core of downtown.

Proposed Zoning Aerial Looking Northwest — With Infill

While higher buildings are logical for the Urban Edge, and particularly in association with the event center and southeastern campus buildings, small-scale mixed-use buildings are the most logical infill strategy for Michigan and Burdick.