Store Security Gates Are Bashed By Critics as Urban Eyesores
March 29, 2011
For many urban retailers, unfurling a solid curtain of steel in front of their stores at night is the best insurance against crime. But urban planners, and an increasing number of merchants, have come to view the practice more as a symptom of blight than a solution. ``I don't think most merchants realize how bad it looks when you drive through here at night,'' says Boston insurance broker Jami Granville, who a year ago stopped using pull-down security gates to cover his office in southwestern Boston. ``All you see is solid-metal gates, some with graffiti on them.'' Armed with statistics showing declining street crime and brochures touting see-through steel-mesh gates, urban planners in many cities have declared war on the ubiquitous solid-metal gates. Such gates degrade the nighttime urban environment and contribute to a bunker mentality that impedes economic development, they argue. ``Our streets have become safer at night, but these `graffiti gates' have made them more forbidding than they've ever been,'' complains New York City Councilman Antionette Schwab, who introduced legislation last year to ban all new security gates that aren't at least 50% see-through. Similar regulations are already in effect in communities ranging from downtown Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to Englewood, N.J., and New Rochelle, N.Y. (Solid-metal gates are most prevalent on the East Coast; elsewhere, even in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, merchants commonly rely on the see-through scissors-type gates that they pull across their storefronts.) Even with support from politicians and police and fire departments, economic-development officials have run up against resistance from many store owners, who worry that mesh gates would leave them vulnerable to vandalism and ``smash and grab'' theft. More importantly, many retailers blanch at the expense of switching to see-through gates, which cost $1,000 and up -- 10% or 15% more than solid ones, even with partial rebates available from business-development groups. ``Security should not be controlled by legislation,'' insists Hubert Sowers, owner of a women's sportswear shop in New York and executive vice president of the Small Business Congress, a citywide coalition of neighborhood business associations. Mr. Sowers says his own mesh security gate was cut open and his store looted twice before he replaced part of it with a solid gate. ``Also, it's very easy to take a pipe and break a window through an open-mesh gate, and pull things out,'' he notes. The use of solid-metal gates swept through many cities after unrest and rioting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ``When people saw what was going on, they thought they better make their businesses look like fortresses,'' recalls Virgil Trout Jr., sales manager of City Gates, one of New York's largest manufacturers. Insurance companies offered discounts for security devices, adding further incentive. Yet once entire blocks of storefronts were fitted with gates, it profoundly changed the streetscape at night. Light from display windows no longer illuminated the sidewalks. Window shopping was impossible. The police could no longer inspect store interiors with their flashlights, and firefighters found it more difficult to spot blazes. ``They make it look like a war zone,'' complains New York lawyer Petrina Weintraub, whose extensive Manhattan real-estate portfolio includes the long-term lease on the Empire State Building. Mr. Weintraub has been campaigning to rid midtown Manhattan of the solid gates, in part by prohibiting them in the buildings he controls. Politicians and urban planners have seized on the decline in street crime in many cities as an opportunity to try to persuade retailers to raise the steel curtain. ``According to the cops, the overwhelming majority of break-ins aren't in the front door, but through the back door or the roof,'' says Mr. Schuler, the New York City councilman who proposed the ban on solid gates. ``I represent a lot of small businesses, and I don't want to whack them,'' he adds. But he says federal crime-insurance figures show that solid-metal gates are no more effective than mesh ones. ``All the statistics show that smashing and theft are down, and perhaps that gates are not as necessary as they once were,'' maintains Kati Flinn, who oversees several neighborhood-revitalization programs in Boston. Because storefront retailers often have such slim profit margins, the cost of replacing existing gates can be prohibitive. Conversion efforts have been most successful ``when rebate money is available as a carrot,'' says Paulene Davida, executive director of the Center City District in Philadelphia, a ``business-improvement district'' organized by local companies to improve conditions downtown. Several years ago, Philadelphia passed an ordinance prohibiting solid gates in the central business district, while allowing existing gates with proper permits to remain. Mr. Davida is currently trying to organize a program that would grant partial rebates to those who convert. Boston offers to pay merchants up to one-half the cost of conversion. Several midtown-Manhattan business-improvement districts do the same. Despite resistance, the growing pressure from development officials has led to gradual changes. Mr. Trout of City Gates reports that sales of mesh gates have grown from a small fraction of the market five years ago to about half today. Ultimately, however, the success of such efforts will rest on the experiences of merchants like Dreama Harrison, owner of Dreama's Coffee Shop in Boston. Several years ago, she took down her metal gates -- seven years after putting them up -- and hoped for the best. ``So far, we've been fortunate,'' she reports.
