Walking Malls Don’t Solve Problems

Every so often, the idea comes back around: Front Royal should close Main Street to traffic and turn it into a walking mall. I hear it all the time when I talk about Destination Development and Tourism.

No cars. Tables and chairs in the street. People strolling from one end of downtown to the other. Maybe some music playing, kids running around, and restaurants with outdoor seating.

It sounds good.

And under the right circumstances, it can be good.

But there is one important thing we need to understand before we start looking at a walking mall as the answer to Main Street’s problems:

Walking malls don’t solve problems. They amplify what is already happening.

If you have a thriving downtown filled with destination businesses, restaurants, entertainment, activities, and stores that people specifically want to visit, removing the cars can give those businesses more room to breathe. It can create gathering spaces, outdoor dining, live entertainment, and an atmosphere that encourages people to stay longer.

But if people don’t already have enough reasons to come downtown, closing the street doesn’t magically create them.

You just end up with the same problem — only now you have a bigger empty space in the middle of it.

We Have to Build the Destination First

I have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes downtowns work.

The successful ones give people multiple reasons to visit.

You don’t drive an hour to another town for a nice sidewalk.

You go because you want to try a restaurant. A brewery you have heard about. A unique store you can’t find at home. Live music. An attraction. An event. Something your kids want to do. Something worth taking a picture of.

And once you are there, you discover everything else.

That is where I believe the conversation about Main Street needs to start.

Before we worry about whether cars should be on Main Street, we need to keep asking a much more important question:

What will make someone choose to spend their Saturday in downtown Front Royal?

We need more destination-based businesses.

We need businesses that don’t simply benefit from foot traffic but actually create foot traffic.

And if we ever want a pedestrian Main Street to work, we especially need businesses that can spill out into that space. I’m aware we have some of these, but we need more.

Restaurants with outdoor dining.

Coffee shops with tables outside

Breweries or similar gathering places.

Retailers that can hold demonstrations, pop-ups, or sidewalk displays.

Artists and makers.

Live music.

Activities for families.

Experiences.

A successful pedestrian area shouldn’t feel like a closed street.

It should feel like a place that has been opened up.

That is a very different thing.

The Street Isn’t the Attraction

I think we sometimes get this backward.

Closing Main Street isn’t the attraction.

What we put on Main Street is the attraction.

The street is simply the infrastructure that allows those attractions to interact with one another.

Think about what happens when we already have a successful event downtown. People walk the street. They visit businesses they may never have noticed before. They eat. They shop. They talk to people. They experience downtown differently.

But they didn’t come because the road was closed.

They came because something was happening.

The road closure helped accommodate the activity. It didn’t create the activity.

That distinction matters.

If we want to strengthen downtown, we should spend far more time talking about business recruitment, experiences, events, and reasons to visit than debating whether cars should be parked on Main Street.

But I Would Absolutely Test It

None of this means I am opposed to experimenting with a pedestrian Main Street.

Actually, I think we should.

Just not permanently — at least not yet.

During the warmer months, why not close Main Street one weekend each month and turn it over to our community?

But there should be one important requirement:

Don’t just close the street.

Program it.

Give each scheduled weekend to a local organization, nonprofit, civic group or community organization and challenge them to create something people will want to attend.

Maybe one month becomes an arts weekend.

Another could focus on local music.

Another could feature outdoor recreation and everything that makes the Shenandoah Valley special.

Maybe there is a food-focused weekend, a family weekend, a veterans weekend, a history weekend, or a local makers weekend.

Let the organizations bring their own creativity, volunteers, networks, and audiences.

Give our downtown businesses the opportunity to participate.

Encourage restaurants and shops to spill into the street.

Bring in activities.

Create places to sit.

Give people something to see around the next corner.

And then promote the heck out of it.

Not simply to Front Royal residents, either.

Market it to Winchester. Northern Virginia. The Washington metro area. Visitors already coming to Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park.

Give someone who was planning to drive through Front Royal a reason to stop.

Give someone who wasn’t planning to come here at all a reason to make the trip.

Then Measure What Happens

The best part about testing the idea once a month is that we don’t have to argue endlessly about whether it would work.

We can find out.

Did more people come downtown?

Did participating businesses see increased sales?

How long did visitors stay?

Did restaurants benefit?

Did retailers benefit?

Did people discover businesses they had never visited before?

What worked?

What didn’t?

Which types of events drew people from outside the area?

We could learn more from six well-planned weekends than we will from six years of debating the idea.

And perhaps, over time, those experiments tell us that Front Royal really could support a larger pedestrian district.

Great.

Or perhaps we discover that closing Main Street works wonderfully for special events but doesn’t make sense every day.

That’s valuable information too.

Build the Reason Before We Build the Solution

I want to see Main Street packed with people.

I want visitors walking from one business to another.

I want restaurants with outdoor tables filled with customers.

I want music coming from somewhere down the street.

I want families spending an afternoon downtown instead of stopping for twenty minutes and leaving.

I want someone visiting Front Royal for the first time to get back in their car and say, “We need to come back here.”

A pedestrian Main Street could someday help create that environment.

But simply putting barricades at the ends of the street won’t do it.

We have to create the businesses, experiences, and attractions that make people want to be there in the first place. That is Destination Development.

Then a walking mall becomes something very powerful.

Not a solution.

An amplifier.

And if we give it something worth amplifying, we might be surprised by just how loud Main Street can become.

Scott’s Turn is a recurring column by Scott Turnmeyer exploring small business, tourism, economic development, and the future of Front Royal and Warren County.