A Main Street Message: Artists Draw People

It's only a chicken-egg debate if you're willing to spend several hundred millions of dollars to turn an egg back into a chicken when the only problem was that the henhouse simply needed some new shingles on the roof. Or, more accurately, a chicken farm that hadn't been convinced by media moguls that the feed was tastier when it was further from the coop.

How can you say that suburban mall businesses that 'grew' during the '80s and '90s didn't survive on foot traffic? People drove to Eastern Hills and the Galleria, then parked their cars and walked miles upon miles to visit such novelties as The Nature Company and Disney Store. The downtown alternative at the time was the going-out-of-business sales at Hengerer's and Woolworths. (neither of which survived the nation-wide consolidation trend and are now part of chains that currently make their living out of urban shoppers)

If there had been an AM&As on Elmwood, it still would have been bought out by Bot-Ton and closed five years later. Hengerer's consolidated into Sibley's which succumbed to Kaufmann's which got wrapped up into Macy's. If The Sample had the wherewithal to survive two decades of urban flight, it would today be an ultra hip urban shopping mecca.

10, 30, 100 parking spaces on Main Street would never have made a difference to any of those anchor department stores. Each had 500+ parking spaces with equivalent storefront traffic on Washington and Pearl (which were actually more convenient due to traffic congestion of the day). Even in 1981, shoppers were more than willing to park blocks away to shop on the storefronts of Main.

Adding auto traffic to Main Street and hoping it will attract business is like spending $10 million to build a high-speed rail line to the abandoned grain elevators. It will NEVER make sense unless we find an occupant that requires such absurd accessibility to automobile traffic. And assuming that the next 20-200 years will rely on cars is like listening to my great grandfather scream into the wind that airplanes will never rule the world the way that airships did.

Sorry, old man. Pick up a newspaper if you don't know how to use the internet. Cars may not become obsolete in your lifetime, but just as the Thruway outran the railroads and just as the railroads outran the canals... there is a new generation about to rule our nation. Bicycles and foot power and public transportation are already overtaking the 1960s mentality of the best way to get around. This is a generation that thinks of itself and its unborn children to come, not just the easiest way to spend an extra $5.00 on getting the closest parking space.

Adding cars to Main is like connecting Canalside to shipping traffic. Quaint. Picturesque. But a century behind its time.