Is it just a ploy? Is it equivilant to greenwashing? I can't readily walk TO a Walgreens without going through their prescribed sea of asphalt, yet they want me to buy into a campaign centered on walking?
Walk-with-Walgreens
Is it just a ploy? Is it equivilant to greenwashing? I can't readily walk TO a Walgreens without going through their prescribed sea of asphalt, yet they want me to buy into a campaign centered on walking?
Walk-with-Walgreens
"You can measure the health of a city by the vitality and energy of its streets and public open spaces.”-- William H. Whyte..
We had a difficult time getting Walgreens to put in a sidewalk. They refused to put any connection to their building which they refused to put closer to the street.
Interesting....
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -Douglas Adams
My local Walgreens is built up to the sidewalk with parking in the rear (and an entrance in both front and back). Of course its been there forever.
Translation: Before they realized how much money they can make off the drive thru pharmacy!Originally posted by jsk1983
We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes - Fr Gabriel Richard 1805
Sounds like good marketing to me. Gram-gram doesn't know a darn thing about Walgreen's fighting requirements in every town it thinks it can get away with it.
from the looks of it, they're not actually encouraging you to walk TO walgreens, or to any store for that matter. for all i can tell, they don't care if you walk in circles around your kitchen table, so long as you log on to their website, track your walk, and then drive to walgreens and use the coupons you've earned to buy products from the program sponsors.
the only mention i could find on the "Walk With Walgreens" website (walk.walgreens.com) about active transportation was this single sentence: "Make a list of all the ways you can save energy this week, and then go green! Run your errands on foot, carpool, or use public transportation. Take it a step further with energy efficient light bulbs, reusable shopping bags, and watching your thermostat."
I assumed the irony of promoting walking when the corporate site design standard of Walgreens is anything but walkable would not be lost to a group reading a planning website. hmmmm....maybe...
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"You can measure the health of a city by the vitality and energy of its streets and public open spaces.”-- William H. Whyte..
We have a pharmaceutical retailer up here in Canada with a similar reputation. They have one building design and they use it everywhere: from suburbia, to historic village main streets, to busy urban cores. In most cases, if they didn’t get their way with the planning department they would threaten to simply walk away which caused most communities to capitulate. However recently, due to so certain communities standing up to them and refusing to budge on the design requirements, they’ve started to build a few multi-storeys, street-related buildings. I know of three of them all built in the last two years. Now that they’ve blinked every community will (rightly) assume they can get the same quality of building for their community.
Just for those of you in the public realm, I have worked with Wal-Mart on three separate occassions and they have 22 distinct levels of architecture fully developed and waiting to be plopped onto any given site. I would not expect Walgreens to have that many, but they certainly have more than one! Do not give in to these corporations and sacrifice what are hopefully good design codes in your communities!
"You can measure the health of a city by the vitality and energy of its streets and public open spaces.”-- William H. Whyte..
In Portland most of the newer and urban Walgreens front the street with windows. But of course Walgreens will not allow you to see into the store and they put nothing in the faux windows except advertising.
The "sea of asphalt" is mostly a zoning requirement.
BTW Prana, I have been a practicing transportation planner in Portland for over 20 years and I hate to disappoint you but it is not the planning nirvana you maybe expecting. We do something’s right and something’s wrong but we mostly rest on our laurels of past achievements
I attended a joint OR-WA APA conf one year, and was struck by the differences in the two states. One panel discussion was amusing when the audience was seeking a compare-contrast on the public process and bottom-up process in OR, and the poor planners were left to hem and haw. This is not to say its all bad, but its...tortuous.
I guess that must explain then why Walgreens seems to like to put truncated dome detectable warning panels up the ying-yang to further illustrate the lack of any sidewalk connection to their building entrance.
We don't even permit outdoor accessory structure like that, and it was an issue. They ended up agreeing to a 4' sidewalk, which we made them change to a 5' sidewalk. Good times...I guess that must explain then why Walgreens seems to like to put truncated dome detectable warning panels up the ying-yang to further illustrate the lack of any sidewalk connection to their building entrance.
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -Douglas Adams
I'll plead ignorance here. When you said you don't permit an outdoor accessory structure like that, what is "that" referring to, the cardboard box?
I've been preoccupied with this picture over the years as it seems like a gross misapplication on the use of detectable warnings. Leading someone to think they might be able to cross only to go directly into a post and/or curb stop seems awkward at the least.
Well it depends on what the cardboard box is. I assumed it was a sales tool of some sort - DVDs, Newspapers, etc.
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -Douglas Adams
Knowing Walgreens in Colorado, my guess is that cardboard box is either extra display space that gets moved in each night. Somehow those uses never get considered years down the road after the building is actually occupied and used.
Completely agree about the inappropriate use of detectable warnings, but this is a Walgreens standard!
"You can measure the health of a city by the vitality and energy of its streets and public open spaces.”-- William H. Whyte..
I'm slow on the uptake. What are you referring to? Also, I don't think those handicapped parking spaces comply with ADA standards. They look too narrow and I've never seen yellow striping to designate handicapped spaces. And the concrete sidewalk in front of the store is far to narrow.
A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place — like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard.
The red border at the edge of the concrete is usually considered to be the tactile warning that ADA would require for placement at a pedestrian crossing where the pedestrian with impaired vision would feel the texture change and know that 1) you should cross here and 2) be wary as you're moving from a relatively protected realm into an area where vehicles are now in the mix. We have been requiring these for several years on access ramps from a sidewalk to a public street.
In this case it seems bizarre to me to have someone with impaired vision coming out of that Walgreens to think they could possibly leave the concrete area and move into the parking lot but then immediately run into a post (ironically that designates handicap parking) and/or a curb stop. These should only be used where you actually want the pedestrian to cross, not the entire frontage and lead them directly into immovable hazards.
I agree with your site design issues as well.
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