Scott Swanson
What do you like about Sweet Home’s downtown?
What don’t you like?
What would you change, if you had the opportunity?
What other downtowns have you been in that really impressed you? Why?
If you can answer these questions, you should make it a point to stop by Sankey Park this Saturday, Oct. 3, to give your opinions. University of Oregon students will be staffing a booth for the express purpose of listening to you (and recording what you say).
As our story on page 11, (written by yours truly), states, we’re taking on the issue of Downtown Redevelopment once again.
Fact is, it may not be too accurate to say “once again” in this context becaus, really, this is just another step in a process that has been ongoing. I frequently hear frustrated people say that the progress has been slow. But five years ago many of the buildings weren’t painted that are today. We didn’t have a department store on the scale that Bi-Mart offers. We didn’t have new trash cans with rain shields conveniently spaced along Main and Long streets.
Of course, we haven’t filled those empty storefronts that continue on, year after year. There’s a new one now, previously occupied by Periwinkle Provisions.
There is progress, but it often takes more time than we’d like.
Are Sweet Home residents content with the status quo? Or can we envision something better?
That’s the real question here, the one the students and those of us involved in the Project Committee that’s monitoring and augmenting this process, want to know.
I frequently hear local folks discuss Sisters. Some make it very clear they don’t want Sweet Home to be a “fake” town like Sisters, with its western-design palette.
The fact is, though, Sisters has done a lot right, which is why people want to stop there. Its design requirements – sign sizes and placements, water features, window sizes, etc. – are specifically designed to draw people in, to make us all stop and walk around a little. And it works.
I know a lot of people who like to go to Sisters.
Why? They enjoy the shopping, the cool stores, the public art. They enjoy the variety of dining opportunities available in the span of five or six blocks. They enjoy the rodeo. They enjoy the quilt show. They enjoy the folk festival.
See a pattern developing?
What else does Sisters have? Dusty, spotty pine forests. Dusty trails. Some mule deer and elk. Some nice water features.
Now let’s talk about Sweet Home. Nestled on the western edge of the Cascade, this town has a river running alongside it, a lake on its eastern border and a much larger lake several miles to the northeast. Less than five miles from the city limits, another river threads its way out of the mountains, which surround the community on two sides, covered with lush forests.
Within 10 miles of downtown are campgrounds offering more than 600 spaces, most with full hookups, and beyond, nearly a dozen more smaller camping facilities.
East of Sweet Home are miles of hiking trails threading their way through lush forests. Rivers and streams cascade down the mountainsides during rainy season – not quite like the wonders of Alaska, but still a sight for smog-clouded city eyes.
It’s not a perfect picture, though.
Too many storefronts along Main Street are empty. We have poverty. Drug and alcohol abuse.
But we do have bustling businesses, including period A&W and Dairy Queen eateries and a movie theater that create flashbacks for anyone who was alive 50 years ago.
There’s also a beautiful median that, yeah, makes it a little more inconvenient to go where one wants in the downtown corridor, but is a sight easier on the eyes than the asphalt strip that used to be there.
The goal of the Livability Study report released last year, the goal of the 2010 Downtown Retail Market Analysis, the goal of the 2003 Oregon Downtown Development Association plan for Sweet Home’s center core were all to help us create a place that people want to stop, where they feel drawn to get out of their cars and check us out.
Yes, it’s going to take some building blocks to get to that point, but we’ve already made progress and the Livability Study and other dispensations of attention from government agencies and foundations on Sweet Home offer steps to get there.
We just have to take those opportunities and the first one you can take is this Saturday.
Just do it.