Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey cities succeed

Mashpee Commons, Cape Cod, Mass.

The community of Mashpee on Cape Cod was one of those no-there-there kind of suburban places built of houses and strip malls. Now, a former strip mall with six stores and a big parking lot is the center of a reimagined Mashpee, modeled on historic towns on Cape Cod.

Developers bought the old strip mall in 1985, went to the community and said it wanted to expand, "but not in the form that has ruined most of Cape Cod," said Cornish Associates' Douglas S. Storrs, who oversees Mashpee Commons. "This isn't rocket science; anybody can do this. It's just looking at what's worked for hundreds of years."

Since 1986, the site has grown from 62,000 square feet with six stores to 330,000 of retail, office and restaurant space, with 110 stores and 40 apartments above them. Two new adjacent residential neighborhoods with 382 homes, including small cottages, town houses and single family houses, will start to come on line in 2011, and will be offered for private ownership.

The Commons environs now contain Mashpee's police and fire house, library, boys and girls club, senior center, movie house, churches and schools, some located around the town commons, or park.

"We have so many people who want to live here it's unbelievable," Storrs said.

"Some people want to live in a cul-de-sac and they have a ton of opportunities to live like that, and that's wonderful," he said, adding it's much harder to find "a new energy-efficient" home that allows people to walk downtown to the library, work, movies, restaurants and stores.

"The nice thing is as time went on, people stopped referring to it as Mashpee Commons," said Storrs, "and simply called it Mashpee . . . it's not our downtown, it's Mashpee's downtown."

Rochester, Mich.This old market town was founded in 1817. It's one of 10 semifinalists in the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Great American Main Street Awards contest.

The bustling town of about 10,500 people describes itself on its website as "A perfect mix of historic and hip" with more than "350 shops, salons, restaurants and professional service businesses; 85 percent of which are independent merchants."

The town rebounded economically with its participation since 1982 in the National Trust Main Street Center's four-point program. The four points are revitalizing through organization; promotion and marketing; design and maintenance; and economic restructuring to diversify and expand Main Street businesses.

Its revitalization campaign reduced a 35 percent vacancy rate to 6 percent, rehabbed 80 buildings, and added a net 1,250 jobs, 225 new businesses, and 26 buildings. The transformation has been fueled by $50 million in public investment and $242 million in private investment.

"When you look at pictures of our downtown in 1983, the structures were there but you wouldn't have seen people or many businesses," said Kristi Trevarrow, executive director of Rochester's Downtown Development Authority. "Now you see streets packed with people, new buildings and profitable businesses. Honestly, our vacancy rate of 5.2 percent is lower than it was two years ago. . . . This coming year we'll see the first decline in property values since 1983. The economy has finally caught up with us to a certain extent.

"I know one of the primary reasons people say they move to Rochester is the downtown."

Liberty Harbor

development,

Jersey City

Jersey City isn't a suburb exactly. But the new Liberty Harbor development there offers the kind of diverse housing options applauded by proponents of what's called "the New Urbanism": high-rise rental and condominium apartment buildings; and low-rise brownstones and town houses.

New Urbanism calls for a traditional melding of higher density residential choices with office and retail space near amenities such as schools, libraries and parks.

Liberty Harbor, on a canal right off the Hudson River, is the creation of developers Peter and Lorraine Mocco, and is served by both a PATH station and light rail station, a ferry that stops at its waterfront, local retail, and nearby parks, schools and medical facilities.