Design for Shopping

A 15-year urban renewal splurge has left Boston's government and financial districts strong and healthy, but the city's neglected downtown retail center has stagnated as established stores have followed the middle classes to the suburbs. Last week Boston joined with Jordan Marsh, the city's biggest department store, and Sefrius Corp., a French syndicate, in a bold attempt to change the situation. Their plan: to build a $220 million project called Lafayette Place that is designed to make downtown shopping attractive once more.

An important part of the developers' strategy is to make it easy for shoppers to get to--and around--the twelve-acre project. There will be a 1,500-car parking garage for suburbanites and, for city dwellers, a direct underground link to the existing subway system. Once at Lafayette Place, shoppers will be able to move from store to store at three levels: in a subterranean concourse, on ground level and, by way of flying bridges, on the second floor. Instead of simply recreating the usual suburban shopping center--a fortress for retailing with all attention focused inward--there will be continuity with the surrounding area. Some of the new stores will front on established city streets, others on Lafayette Place's own maze of pedestrian malls and glassed-in galerias, which were designed by the architects (I.M. Pei & Partners with Cossutta & Ponte) to have the same twists and unexpected shop-filled alleyways as old Boston's typical streets. Says Jacques Teze, president of Sefrius: "People will feel that they are in a lively city--not trapped in a moneymaking machine."

Lafayette Place's buildings will be in scale with surrounding architecture and will rise above the retail floors to provide space for offices and a hotel. These should help attract people and keep the center bustling. Last week, even as the ambitious scheme was announced, it began moving toward reality. Wrecking crews started to demolish the first old building on the site of Lafayette Place.

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