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Class
B for Buses
To Larry Feldman, the accessibility of the stores at Colonie
Center is of paramount importance.
Feldman, the chairman and CEO of Feldman Properties, buys
“underperforming malls in great locations” and “turns them
into Class A malls.” (In the biz, Class A means more than
$350 in sales per square foot per year for non-anchor stores.)
One of the major trends Feldman tries to cater to is the rise
of the “busy working woman” who wants to get in, do her shopping
and get out. Compared to the 1970s, he explains, women have
“much less time to go through a long ring road, and perhaps
park in a structured parking garage, and start shopping 15
minutes later. She wants to drive up, get in and start shopping
immediately.” To achieve this, the renovation is “opening
out” the mall, so that more stores—especially the new ones
like Cheesecake Factory, Barnes and Noble, and L.L. Bean—have
doors directly out onto the parking lot. This means you don’t
have to “go deep into the mall” before you start shopping.
Getting to shop immediately is so important that they are
actually going to have valet parking.
Also as a result of the renovations, the mall’s bus stop has
been relocated out to Wolf Road.
Doesn’t exiling buses to the periphery seem a little at odds
with the shortest-time-to-shopping priorities? “That would
only [be a problem for] someone who is handicapped,” says
Feldman after a pause. “It’s a two-minute walk.”
He’s kind of right. It is a two-minute walk from the bus stop
to the nearest mall entrance. For me, when I’m not carrying
too much. For my mother-in-law, who has bad knees, it’s quite
a bit longer. For her, from the bus stop to the inside entrance
of Macy’s it’s about 15 minutes. On a good day. And she’s
more mobile than some.
It could be worse. It could be all the way across the longer
stretch of parking lot to the south of the mall. They are
going to put covered pedestrian walkways from a couple entrances
to the stop, which will certainly make the walk better. STAR
buses for the disabled and the Shuttlefly still come directly
up to the main entrance, though to no other doors (this apparently
at CDTA’s discretion).
But the changes still represent a significant barrier to many
of the disabled and elderly who take regular buses to Colonie
Center, and at least an added hassle for the rest of us bus
riders. It’s the equivalent of having to park at one spot
on the edge of Wolf Road, no matter how crowded the mall is
or what part of it you are going to, which is exactly what
Feldman is taking pains to make sure it’s not like for drivers.
(The shuttle is a nice option to have, but taking two buses
where you used to take one is no one’s idea of quick and easy.)
The stores know this—when the advocacy group Citizens for
Public Transportation (formerly Citizens for Transportation,
www.times union.com/communities/cft) canvassed stores with
the question “Would you like to . . . [have] the bus stop/shelter
returned to an entrance of the Center?”, of the 32 surveys
they got filled out, 31 said yes. “The walk is too long for
seniors” wrote a Payless representative. “It would be more
business for the mall,” wrote a CVS representative. “It would
help employees get to work on time,” noted a Motherhood Maternity
representative.
“I
am definitely in favor of bringing the bus line back into
the mall,” Gary Boyer, store manager for Boscov’s, told me.
“I would be open to looking into possibilities for where it
could stop in the back of the mall, and feel it would be advantageous
for our coworkers and our customers.”
After all, bus riders—be they disabled, elderly, or regular
working folk—have money to spend. (Even people who can’t afford
cars have some money to spend—in fact, they spend a
far higher percentage of their incomes than rich folks do.
They have to.)
But Feldman says that a bus stop can’t co-exist with retailers
having entrances facing outwards. Funny how little, upscale,
financially successful Stuyvesant Plaza has three. Just a
guess, but I think “can’t” here is code for “We think it’s
unsightly.”
The mall is firm about not wanting the stop where it was,
but exactly what or who is preventing a bus stop at the back
of the mall at least is a little murky. Colonie Center general
manager Joseph Millett and Feldman both told me they’d be
fine with having a stop there, and Millett even says he’d
suggested it to CDTA in their initial negotiations and CDTA
declined.
However, CDTA spokesperson Margo Janack, after emphasizing
how helpful the mall has been in working with them through
the transition, said in an e-mail message, “At this time,
we do not have permission to establish a bus stop at the mall.”
She also expressed reservations about the ability of the large
buses to negotiate the reconfigured mall parking lot safely
or while remaining on schedule.
The one thing that is clear is that there is a missed opportunity
here for Colonie Center to be a truly transit-friendly mall.
If Feldman had decided that it was a priority, it would certainly
have been possible to incorporate buses’ needs into the redesign
of the mall and its parking lot such that they could have
moved quickly and safely in and out of the property and picked
up and dropped off shoppers and employees closer to their
destinations. Buses have specific needs, but they are not
out of proportion with the scope of the renovations already
being done.
It’s all a matter what you think goes into being “Class A.”
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
www.mjoy.org
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