Downtown Development Vital

Mrs. Madville Times is right! Downtown development is essential for a community's economic and cultural well-being. Ben "I've Escaped Aberdeen!" Dunsmoor reports on the second annual Downtown Development Idea Exchange conference in Sioux Falls this week ["Idea Exchange for Downtown Development," KELOLand.com, 2007.07.18]. Conference attendees are busy brainstorming ideas for events, websites, parking, and landscaping that can bring more life to their downtown cores.

"Core" is a really important word. Downtown is the heart of a community, usually the original center of business, government, entertainment, and culture. Downtown Madison has the traditional retailers, city hall, the courthouse, restaurants, and the library. Like many small towns, Madison shows off some of its finest old houses within a five-minute walk of downtown That sort of concentration brings all branches of the community together and mixes them daily.

But over the past few decades, Madison has seen a dispersal of those downtown functions. We still have a lot of businesses and offices downtown, the library has been nicely expanded and renovated, and the city hall and the courthouse aren't going anywhere. But entertainment venues have disappeared from downtown. My dad remembers two movie houses downtown, but both closed up before my time, to be replaced by our tin-roof cinema tucked away at the far end of a gravel lot at the edge of town. The playhouse is up on the north edge of town. Over 40 years the schools have all been moved to the periphery as well; even the Christian school is building out in the country, away from physical connection with the community. Restaurants and retail have also migrated away from the center, most recently with the Southridge and Schaefer Plaza developments, plus the ugliest new building in town, the new Dollar General on Washington Ave. (Just what Madison needs: a third franchise dollar store.) And of course, residential capital is invested in ever greater distances away from downtown, increasing car traffic and decreasing the number of of people walking to the store or the office. All of those changes mean less interaction between people in and on their way to and from the downtown area.

The Idea Exhange folks get this concept: downtown matters, practically and metaphorically. Bringing and keeping diverse elements of the community together in the downtown area enhances the sense of community identity and cohesion. When businesses, government offices, and even residential developments start dispersing to the periphery, the community starts to lose its sense of a shared core. Every South Dakota town needs to remember that the key to a healthy community (remember: community comes from common) is not simply economic growth wherever it can be had, but an effort to grow while maintaining and nurturing the sense of shared space, the downtown core, that defines a community.