Can success be bad for business? In fact it can. Most urbanists are familiar with this concept, something learned from the late Jane Jacobs. The best way to illustrate her premise is with a local story that actually has me a bit concerned. But first a little history.

Downtown Boise was a wreck by the mid 1960s. In 1965, prominent Boise citizens Bill and Ted Eberle put together legislation authorizing creation of urban renewal agencies. The City of Boise quickly established the BRA - the Boise Redevelopment Authority (Today it is the CCDC - Capital City Development Corporation). The agency’s chief task, was to demolish the dowtown core to make way for a shopping mall. The mall never came to fruition, but the City fell to ruin and demolition.

By the time the 1970s rolled around, downtown Boise was a hollowed-out, bulldozed ghost town - even amidst the boom of Albertsons, MK, and Boise Cascade. A writer from Harpers who visited the City in 1974 wrote something to the effect that you could fire a cannon down Main street and hurt very few people.

1985 marked the turning point. In 1983, citizens replaced three incumbent City Council members. In 1985, they replaced three more. Boise residents had enough, and the new City leaders responded by bringing the American Institute of Architects to town. The architects did what seemed natural, but had been largely ignored to this point: they convened a series of meetings, and actually asked regular folks what they wanted their City to look like. What you see in downtown Boise today is the result of citizen request, and professional design.

We have a thriving downtown, the center of which is the Eighth Street corridor. 6,000 people converge on Eighth Street each Saturday throughout the year for Saturday market. Various groups host numerous events along this corridor, and in the Grove Plaza, all year long. There are at least two threats to this success story. And they are not threats because of anything going wrong in the downtown, but because things are going well. Now to explain the Jane Jacobs theory.

When I ate lunch on Eighth Street on Monday, I noticed a new restaurant. How could this be a bad thing you ask? A new business start! Great! Wrong. This new Mexican restaurant sits across the street from another Mexican restaurant. And by the way, the Sushi restaurant (Tacabi) which sits next to the new Mexican restaurant, sits across the street from another Sushi place. This is the beginning of death by success.

What happens is that as one restaurant is succesful, other restaurants want to locate nearby, displacing other retailers. So just three years ago we had a kitchen store, and a rug vendor in the mix along Eighth Street, now we have only one non-restaurant retailer. My prediction: that retailer won’t last. They’ll soon get pressured to leave so the landlord can get more rent from a restaurant. Then Eighth Street will die.

Agglomeration - or the concentration of a particular kind of business is only good to a point. Three car dealers - even competitors - will sell more cars if they are located next door to each other than they would if located at a distance. The same works for restaurants - but really only to a point when they are in a setting such as Eight Street. People go to Eight Street because it is - or was - funky and cool. You can jet down there and grab a bite to eat. If your favorite place is busy, you go to the place next door. When you’re done you can drop in the shops or do some window shopping. Except that there are no shops anymore so once you’ve eaten, there’s nothing left to do but leave.

When there’s nothing left to do but leave, people quit coming. When they quit coming, Eighth Street dies. And the competition might not even be that far away. As the Linen District gets cooler, people will migrate over that way. Tenth street is mounting a challenge as well with cool dining spots, and retail intermixed. And then there’s BoDo. Look out Eighth Street.

So - in my estimation, which is borrowed from Jane Jacobs, the Eighth Street property owners (Ken Howell and the Baum Brothers) need to figure out a way in a hurry to bring some diversity back to what used to be novel and cool, or Eighth Street will become a victim of its own success.