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.
One problem that downtowns face in South Dakota is the original design. Several towns I have visited in other states have a central building (a courthouse or other government building) and the four streets around that block are populated with businesses. The central block always has greenspace that is used as a park. Most towns in SD have main streets which becomes a business corridor versus a gathering space.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, good public gathering space can be tough to find downtown. Madison does have nice greenspace around its courthouse and in Library Park, areas that are used for various community events (Flag Day ceremony at the courthouse, farmer's market every Thursday afternoon at Library Park... oh! and Art in the Park at Library Park next Saturday, July 28!).
ReplyDeleteBut even in Madison, the shiniest tooth in Mike Rounds's smile, those fine gathering spaces are off to the east a couple blocks from Egan Avenue, where we have the business corridor Tim describes. Take a look at the aerial photo of Aurora, Nebraska: I think that's what Tim has in mind, and it's quite lovely. Madison and most South Dakota towns can't replicate that design, not without some serious bulldozing. For now, we'll have to work for smaller spaces, maybe the occasional old storefront replaced with a pocket park (like "Nick's Park" on Brookings's Main Street), and more downtown festivals where we detour the cars and make the street itself the gathering space for walkers, talkers, and gawkers.