Tuesday, September 26

The Exodus from the Downtown Continues

The Courthouse is going across the river. The clinic moved their Immediate Care facilities out by the hospital. Now, the Social Security Administration is moving out by the hospital, as well.

Literally hundreds of downtown jobs are vacating the area for new office spaces on the periphery of town. What are our downtown boosting organizations doing about it? Apparently nothing. There will be no executive director of the BID, just a secretary/receptionist.

Block parties in the summer are not the answer.

2 comments:

GeeGuy said...

What is the answer?

Part of the problem is, in my opinion, the lack of responsibility on the part of government officials who are much quicker to spend our money on fancy new digs for themselves than to try and rehab older buildings.

Treasure State Jew said...

Geeguy;

Certainly part of the issue is the desire for new construction instead of rehabilitating older buildings. However, as the owner of several older buildings, I can tell you with experience that it is often more expensive to rehab than to build new.

If our downtown revitalization depends on government jobs, we might as well stop wasting our time. Like anything else of value, private industry must lead the way. We have to show potential businesses that there is a benefit to locating their operations in the downtown.

The exodus of government jobs might actually be a blessing in disguise here. There will now be a glut of office space available for rent. That space could easily be filled with call centers, light manufacturing centers, etc.