EP 78: Ideas from the Alley
When you think of downtown alleys, what comes to mind? Bad associations, maybe? The place to avoid at night? Ever since childhood, Americans have had the general impression that alleyways are dark, dirty, dangerous -- the right setting for noir crime stories. And that might sometimes be the case. But some U.S. cities are starting to embrace their alleys like assets -- as places to be -- with art, lighting, planters, seating and cleanliness. This is a classic episode of Municipal Equation from 2017, loaded with interesting voices and ideas.
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Transcript
This is Municipal Equation from the North Carolina League of Municipalities.
Hello. Welcome. My name is Ben Brown. And thank you for joining us on another episode of Municipal Equation, the show about cities and towns adapting to change, coming to you from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. And this one goes into the archives, a classic episode of Municipal Equation from the distant year of 2017. But the material is still relevant and fun and gets our creative sides going. This episode is about the underutilized alleyways in our towns, assets that we associate with, say, you know, crime and dinginess, but have a lot of potential. As always, episodes of Municipal Equation are more journalistic, you know, rather than prescriptive. We're just exploring ideas that might fit if you like. This is a fun one with a lot of voices. Let's get to it.
Maybe it's just me. But when I think of alleyways, I think of Dashiell Hammett. I think of David Goodis, Ken Bruin, Raymond Chandler, Ed McBain. Noir crime fiction or police procedurals. I think of words like dark, seedy. Alleyways are these creepy, narrow, shadowy spaces that are the perfect hiding place for people with bad intentions. Alleyways are where the deals go bad. They're covered in grime and trash. They're where the rats live and die. There's a reason why tough guy rock bands have worn out the alleyway group photo. And those bad associations are just associations. Maybe they're played up in books and movies, but they've got to be founded in something. I feel like they're one of those examples people give when they talk about common sense, like, don't wander into a dark alleyway at night. Matter of fact, when you were a kid, you probably heard that almost verbatim from either your parents, or teachers, or the police officer who visited your auditorium at school, or those old scratchy awareness videos about stranger danger.
But look where this had left the twins. The alley looked real great. Should they go through and get home fast? It's growing dark and late. But mother's words came to their mind. And though they'd like to go, they knew that this was time to stop. The best time to say no. It's never safe in alleys or empty buildings too. It's always best to travel Okay. Let's hear another one. Now let's look at some of the places
and some of the ways you might run into trouble. Here's one, a lonely alley. It'd be dumb for anybody to try to harm you with a lot of other kids around, wouldn't it? Right. How about a third?
Say, I wonder if there's a shortcut down this way.
We never walk or play in lonely places.
I guess I'd better go the way I'm sure of. Okay. And to beat a dead horse. Don't walk through dark or lonely street.
Who can tell us why? The children realize that safe behavior is just as important as spelling and arithmetic. Okay. Last one, last one, last one. You know what I mean by dangerous places. Isolated places like faking lots or back alleys may not be safe, and you never know who might be hiding. Avoid unfamiliar shortcuts. What if something happened?
Your family would not know where to look for you and you may need help. The point is, it's been in our heads since we were kids that alleys are bad. And I'm not gonna cut down that basic advice from those old awareness videos. Kids who were walking alone should should be in safe areas. And good judgment is always good judgment. So, don't take this episode the wrong way. What I am talking about is the added value of transforming alleyways into something totally different.
This came to mind while I was on a trip across Europe and seeing how alleyways are very much a a well used thing. They could be community spaces. They could link streets together, not just shortcuts, but obvious routes for pedestrians to use. With pedestrians filling them, they naturally take on that character with lighting and colorful paint, potted plants, and things that look like part of the world we enjoy.
A little more than a year ago, I read a blog post on this topic by a then master's candidate with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with its department of city and regional planning. His name is Peter Gorman, and he's since got his master's and jumped right into a career. So he's really busy, but he was cool enough to meet up with me in Downtown Durham and show me around to some of the alleyways there. Alright. So I'm in Downtown Durham, waiting on Peter at a place he requested we meet, and appropriately, it's called Alley twenty six.
Yeah. Alley twenty six, a trendy cocktail bar in Downtown Durham located right next to, Alley 26, the 20 Sixth Alley of, Durham. That was Peter. We were standing right outside the alleyway, which had been totally revitalized and jazzed up tastefully.
Basically an extension for patrons and business access.
I think that they're really forgotten spaces in most urban contexts. But Alley 26 as it is now, I mean, it's seating, it's, pedestrian connection, it's a welcoming space that people wander into. And this revitalization
focused pretty well on preserving the historic look, the rough feel of the brick, the old wood, and the archtop windows with bits of updates and modern design mixed in. So we took our time checking it out. Yes. We
want to record the lights down. So we sat in the lights and Alloys were originally, in the European context and in Asian cultures as well,
originally designed for pedestrians. Street traffic was carriages, horses, a dangerous place that people didn't wanna be. They used alleyways to get from their houses between blocks, to where they actually needed to go. So in the American context, however, alleyways developed as or an access point of utilities, of deliveries especially. And so after it has filled the trash, noise, heat, kind of pushed everyone out onto the street. So the American context, we have more sidewalks. European context have more lane ways, what they call them over there, alleyways as well. Once you start making these alleyways into inviting spaces, I think that there is gonna have to be a culture change. Right? And people's behaviors are gonna have to change as the space changes. So how do we take an alleyway from bad to good? Well, I think that there's a couple of steps. I mean, first, you have to actually understand what you have. A lot of these spaces are forgotten. They're not claimed by anyone. So first just understand, then you actually have to plan and say, what are we gonna do with these alleyways? A big first step is just getting people in them, making people aware that they exist, getting them comfortable in the space. After you do that, there's a lot of options for communities to actually invest in their alleys and alleyways and make something of them. And
what you said about maybe some misunderstanding or mystery behind ownership, I mean, how was that sorted out?
Well, messily, honestly. A lot of times, alleyways can be owned by three different entities. They can be owned by the municipality themselves, owned and maintained. They can be, state transportation agency owned, or they can be owned by a budding property owners. Oftentimes, people just don't know. The lot lines on a lot of these alleyways, constantly shifts when people expand their expand their backyards. It's not really up to date in terms of required street maintenance. So when there is an issue or even an interest in redeveloping it, oftentimes, people don't
raise their hands to take care of it. So getting an inventory, understanding ownership, investing in improvements, and getting people into alleyways for a good purpose, I I wanted to see another on the ground example, one that hadn't been revitalized yet. So we set out to find a disgusting, seedy, dark, dank alley. I guess just for listeners, we're in an alleyway. The the buildings are maybe what is that? Like, 20 feet apart or something like that. It's just a little gravel kind of driveway in between. Looks like a dozen, sitting trash cans, leaking pipes, a dead rat, I'm just now seeing, and a lot of ponding water, I guess, some wood pallets, on and on. I mean, this is basically everything you could you can throw into an alley. But what can we do with this? Yeah. I mean, this is really the greatest hits. Right? There are,
what is that, almost 10 recycling bins that are overflowing. I think that what you a major study would really wanna do here is, take the edge off. I mean, this isn't not only is this alley not a benefit to the city, it's actually a big drain. As people walk by here, they're not gonna feel safe. They're not gonna wanna turn the corner, and explore what's down there because they know the other side of the alleyway is down there. Even just cleaning this up with a few beautifications, would go a long way in actually, making this, inviting block. So really understanding where your alleys are, doing an alleyway survey is a really easy, simple, first step in understanding sort of the, back of the book of your downtowns.
Alright. So the first thing on the checklist for any local government official who gets inspired to revamp a beat up alley like this one is to find out who owns it, see if they even know they own it, see if they have any plans for it. They might be interested in actually donating it donating it to the city.
That would allow, a lot of, public options to come onto the table. If I had my way, there's a lot of small individual trash cans in this alley. Centralized in one dumpster. Make it in one corner as small as possible. Repave it or put on a new layer of gravel. Make it safe so if a four year old fell, they wouldn't get cut. Right? You just want that minimum, standard of I'm okay to be in this space for at least five minutes. Something that just dawned on me is there's, six windows, directly facing onto the alleyway. Those look like residential apartments. If I lived there, I'd be able to cut out this alleyway to go downtown, not all the way around the block. Even just adding some artful color to the alleyway can invite that kind of use, Peter said. These buildings, while not anything sort of architecturally amazing, have a lot of blank space. That's a could be a great place for a mural, could be a great place for a public art
gallery. So I was already deep into the interviews for this episode when I was clicking around randomly through local newspapers in North Carolina for a different project I was working on. And I happened to find a headline out of Wilson, North Carolina for a project called Artsy Alleys. It's an initiative of the Wilson Downtown Development Corporation, and they've already done up a couple local alleyways with artwork precisely to take the edge off.
Susan Kellum, Wilson, North Carolina, downtown marketing and communications coordinator. The purpose obviously of, revitalizing the alleyways in numerous ways is to make them brighter. Mhmm. So that they aren't afraid of the dark, to give them a destination, an arrival destination, or or a journey along the way to their destination, that's fun and inviting, but also better signage in the alleyways to let them know what is at the end of the alleyway. Mhmm. Is it parking? Is it a park? So all of those were taken into consideration as we were thinking about doing this, letting them know where they're going, having a wonderful experience along the way, and then having a destination at the end.
What are what considerations went into putting up artwork?
Well, the first consideration is to use the artists that we have locally, and that's really what we wanted to kick this off with. Jimmy Sink at Creekside Creative, does he's he is downtown property owner downtown, has been involved for many, many years. And the wrought iron is such a big part of our branding also that we just thought it was the the perfect element to start off with and to show people what they already have in their downtown that they may not be aware of. So we wanted to highlight the downtown artisans. And also as moving forward, the second, alleyway that we did was a painted alleyway. So we did that in conjunction with one of our local schools, and their middle school art department. Mhmm. So we want this to be in addition to being something that serves a purpose. A bigger purpose was to bring the community together and to get, people involved. The the event itself is a great way to bring people down there that haven't been there in a while. And you get a nice side benefit of that as they start seeing all the things that are happening, and they have ownership. And then they wanna bring other people down there to show them what they did.
So are are you seeing that? Are you seeing people kind of stopping and and, observing the alleyways? And, you know, did you get feedback from businesses? And how does how does all that go?
We do get we do get good feedback. And and, interestingly enough, our newspaper has just moved back downtown. And so so they're giving us some really gate great coverage too because now they're again one of our neighbors. Mhmm. And so it's nice to have them down there. And, the feedback has been wonderful. And and the people wanting to participate too, the the school that, that joined us for the project, you know, is chomping at the bit to do another one with us. But we're gonna and we want them back, but we're all gonna spread the love too and and get, other schools and, involved in other artisans in the projects as we move forward.
Does the, the city itself play a role in it? The city government?
They do. Okay. They give us, they assist with things like the lighting. It depends on the project. It really does. Some are done specifically. You know, we've done two so far. The city pay played a part in the first one. They did not in the second one. The second one was completely volunteer driven. So it depends on what the the necessary components are for the project. But they have absolutely been willing to participate, where they could so far.
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So, are there outside funding sources that would apply to say for instance, would a community development block grant work for something like this? Yeah. Community development block grants have been used in the past.
Park funding has also been used, if they're creating, more public space, especially a walkway. But I don't wanna, decrease the, or de emphasize the amount of, pub or private monies that have actually been raised. A lot of people care about their alleyways once you remind them that they're there. And I think it's as easy as saying, does this community wanna invest in in an alleyway? And putting together both the public and the private funding sources to make that happen.
They definitely made it happen in Shelby, North Carolina. It's a town of about 20,000 residents about an hour west of Charlotte along Highway 74. And a lot of people who aren't familiar with
the area, but may drive that stretch of 74 sometimes will say, oh, Shelby. I've been to Shelby. It's the only, I forget how many, 11 maybe stoplights between Charlotte and Nashville.
That's Audrey Wheaton, executive director of the Uptown Shelby Association, and she quickly emphasizes that that's not an informed take on Shelby, which people on the inside know is a really great town. Among many things, it's the home of the Earl Scruggs Center, the namesake for which is a banjo legend, and the Don Gibson Theater, named for the Shelby native who wrote tons of country music hits. Shelby also has a bounty of cool functional alleyways that are part of a sort of grid layout where people could use the alleys for cut throughs, a pedestrian haven away from the vehicle traffic.
And, most of those alleys are still intact. A few of them have gotten, repurposed or kind of closed over the years. But for the most part, we still have a really, vibrant alley system in Uptown. And we have close to 200 businesses in our Uptown area, and we've been seeing a lot of increase in private and public investment in our district. Shelby was hit really hard, like a lot of North Carolina towns, by the exodus of the textile industry in the late nineties and the early two thousands.
Sounds like a long time ago by now, but a lot of North Carolina towns, especially small ones, are still feeling the effects of manufacturing departures and the overlap of the great recession. So for the past years, there's been a lot of effort to invest in downtown revitalization and to make an effort to reinvent themselves, reinvent these cities, and tie their history in with modern appeal. Interest in revitalizing a certain alleyway in Shelby goes back, like, fifteen years, a long time. Ideas were good, but the price tag was a bit high. Then a guy named Fred Blackley gets involved. So we're getting to what Peter said about leveraging resources to make it happen.
Hey. How are you, Ben?
I'm doing great. How about you? Fine. Thank you.
Yes. I'm Fred Blackley, and I live in Shelby, North Carolina. And I'm a landscape architect's lab profession.
He's also the president of the Uptown Shelby Association's board of directors. He told me the alleyway they were looking at had an estimated cost for improvements of around 35 to $55,000.
That number, it it just
it wasn't gonna happen. But the desire was still on the table, and they talked about a potentially scaled back version of the plan to try and reach affordability.
The first plan wasn't gold plated by any means, but it it it it did involve, nicer finishes and pavers and things like that.
So they looked at it and mapped out some cheaper alternatives, but it was still adding up to about $25, which in some respects isn't a massive amount of money. But for an alley, they wanted to be respectful with the funds they had, so it wasn't green lit until Blackley started flexing resources.
I am a a scout leader as well as a board member and landscape architect. So I've sort of brought to the to the table a young man who was looking for a volunteer
service project. So an Eagle Scout comes in, and the math starts to look a lot better.
We we talked it over. I brought in a a local landscape contractor that I work with a lot and basically arrived at an option where, the Uptown Shelby Association would pay for some basic improvements, some drainage improvements, construction of some steps, and sort of grading to get the ground right and deliver materials and dump them on the site. And then volunteers in the form of this this scout and his, leader, helpers, would spread the gravel, compact the base, prepare the base for pavers. And then we had heard that the city of Shelby had a stockpile of brick pavers left over from a previous demolition project. They used to be around all the tree planters in uptown, and, they've been taken up and stockpiled. And they had thousands and thousands of brick. And so they asked the local government. Would you donate the brick to this project if it's done by volunteers? And they agreed
to solve the scouts. We all laid the bricks ourselves, which was
a painstakingly long process. This is Austin McGinnis, the Eagle Scout we're talking about. But
it was really worth it. It was over 8,000 bricks, around 8,000 bricks. Over 8,000 bricks. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It took a it took a lot of time.
So, yeah, how much time, did you put into it, and what else did you guys do?
So it took around three man hours total. 300, you said? And yeah. Three hundred man hours. That was over, various weekends. A lot of the scouts were all all the scouts were all in high school or middle school. And so the only times we could really work were Saturdays, and so it would be Saturday workdays.
The scouts also planted vegetation.
Two trees planted various bushes. There was, there was some stairs in the alley that were rusted, and we, we painted those black. And there was also, one of one of the one of the restaurants planted herb garden. They had herbs throughout the plant. We planted herbs behind their restaurant.
The results were getting all kinds of fanfare. And remember the initial price tag that Uptown Shelby was hearing about was 35 to $55,000
or 25,000 once they tried a cheaper scenario. The final result of the projects only cost us about $5,000. So it was just a it was just a huge difference from going from an estimated $35,000 at the lowest to $5,000.
The project kind of broke the ice once people saw the results. After that, another Eagle Scout did another alley in town and so on.
The ripple effects was definitely really important just because the other Eagle Scout project that was just right there. And then right across the street, across one of the main roads in Shelby, a restaurant completely revitalized one of their alleys and is now using it as outdoor seating.
Audrey says the visual effect really hits people who find these places.
People love to stumble upon something and feel like they've discovered it, kind of a little gem, just, mixed in amongst everything else, and especially if they knew what it looks like before it, before the improvements were made. So I think that that kind of, rewarding people's sense of exploration and creating a sense of discovery.
Here's the coolest part.
We found that when we did our alley improvements, especially our first one, which was more much more visible because it's an actual walk through, pedestrian walkway, that people would they told us we heard often that people were changing their route even for to go to their office or to go to lunch or if they parked and were going to dinner or meeting somebody, they would go out of their way to walk through that alley because they thought it looked so good, and they were so happy, and it was so much more pleasant to be there. And so I think there was both a sense of delight that Mhmm. Something had been improved so visibly Right. Yeah. But also a sense of of pride that this beautiful space was available to them to to use and that they could show it to friends who are visiting or family members or or other people who might not be familiar with Uptown Shelby or, you know, somebody they were hosting for business. They would take them through and and and share it and basically show it off, which is in my opinion, you can't really ask for much better than that for people to take that kind of ownership and pride in a project.
From a private developer's perspective, you would have, possibly increased rents, better use of existing space, but for a municipality, you have expanded retail options. You have an inviting intimate space for, restaurants, for, creative office space, as well as, really niche, retail spaces as well. There's also the benefit of actually having an urban space in a lot of these smaller main streets that just sort of are one way. The this is a easy way to break them up into fuller city like blocks.
So you never kind of know, like, what you're gonna discover as you to make the turns through there. It's a fun, I think it's a fun way to to walk through the study.
I wanna thank everybody who spoke on this episode. Allison Meyer, Peter Gorman, Susan Callum, Audrey Whetten, Fred Blackley, and Austin McGinnis.
Thank you for listening to another episode of Municipal Equation, the show about cities and towns adapting to change produced by the North Carolina League of Municipalities, working as one, advancing all. You can learn more online at www.nclm.0rg. If you have a comment or an idea for a future episode, please reach out. My name is Ben Brown, and you you can email me at bbrown@nclm.org. Keep the communication coming so we can keep the conversation going. We'll talk to you on the next one. Thanks for listening to Municipal Equation.