Welcome to our second 2023 newsletter as we continue production, post-production and fundraising for the Saving the City documentary series about how to make our cities better places. Food has been a staple ingredient of urban vitality ever since cities were established as market centers, trading posts and transportation hubs. With the big downtown department store on the endangered species list and most city center shopping districts long gone, restaurants, bars, public markets, food halls and entertainment venues have taken over as primary downtown destinations. While it seems as if every vacant urban retail space of size will eventually become another farm-to-table food hall, several historic markets are surviving and thriving by blending their traditional fresh food offerings with a myriad of dining experiences as well. |
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The goal for these public markets is how to keep these two competing but complementary uses in balance as can be found in Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market, Pike Place Market in Seattle and the Eastern Market in Detroit. Offering up a different course is the food hall that ate Nashville. Touted as North America's largest, the 110,000 sq ft Assembly serves up over 20 eateries, 10 bars and three stages including a full service restaurant and rooftop entertainment venue seating 1,600. As we were already shooting in these cities, we filmed at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal as well as the Grand Central Market in downtown LA, and plan a full menu of food-related stories – from fresh markets to supermarkets, food halls to food trucks and outdoor dining as a public amenity as well as the restaurant business as an economic engine. Check out all of our newsletters here. Below is the Garage Food Hall at the Bottleworks District in Indianapolis. |
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After watching Saving the City, you will never look at cities the same way again. We hope you will be inspired to make a difference in your local communities. Check out our work and let us know what you think. We're always hungry for more stories and refer us to people we should know about. And please share this newsletter with friends and family. |
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Thanks to generous funding from the William Penn, Packard, Hewlett, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia Foundations, Heinz Endowments, an Urban Land Institute leadership group and individuals led by George Miller and Chris Larsen, we have raised over $900,000 to date. A more complete list of contributors is here. Help us raise the $600,000 needed to complete our first two episodes as we're almost one-third of the way there. All funds go through the International Documentary Association, a 501c(3) non-profit. |
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Thank you to Linda and Sandy Gallanter who are generously providing production support. |
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"We don't want a plan based on land uses. We want a plan based on experiences. Who visits downtown to see land uses?" Mitchell Silver – former New York City Parks Commissioner |
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Meet David O'Neil, who transformed Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market from 1980 to 1990 and has consulted on over 100 markets around the world. |
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Copyright © Ronald M. Blatman, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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