Faye Cupples
RiverTown Flea Market (in the old John Ward Hardware Building)

Yes, I’m talking about the permanent closing of Upper Third St. and the sell-out to Rapides Regional.

Futhermore, how many businesses have their own stop sign for their parking lot to have equal right-of-way to a public main flow street? This should have at least been a hard curve with no stopping of traffic flow with a turning lane for the hospital parking lot.

Yes, I know we need the boost and expansion that the hospital offers as it will better serve the community.
However many other city’s manage with elevated walkways and parking.

Not at the expense of the small businesses as on Upper Third st..
Which, by the way, is in the Community Revitalization Zone.
So much for revitalizing.

So, can the city,without spending countless months and dollars hiring firms to do studies, or maybe when the city finally gets an engineer, at least make it a little easier to get to downtown and address the bottleneck on Upper Third St. and the massive One Way confusions where daily you meet up with someone going the wrong way.

You know, things like where the 3rd St. right hand land just all of a sudden ends over the blind spot of a bridge. If it is beyond getting permission from Rapides Regional to make a curve out of their 3 way stop then maybe they could allow the City to put in place a right and left turning lanes?

Brian

One thing we need to realize is that downtown redevelopment is not a one-focus endeavor; we need a holistic aproach. If not one that deals with the issues of the entire community, at least one that deals with the immediate area.

For one thing, even though the nature of both are very different, we need to look at the Pineville side of the river as an integral component of any downtown scheme. That side of the river actually has the best land for on-the-water development (especially from a marina point).

If anyone on here has been to Nashville and visited Opry Mills (formerly Opryland), it’s a great mixture of convention space, restaurants, and outlet mall. It even has a Basspro Shops store with a boat delearship (which would be a fixture that I think would add value to the riverfront and especially to a river marina). This sort of thing would be an ideal development for the riverbank oposing downtown Alexandria.

I’ve often thought we should rename Jackson to Rue Principal de Louisiane (‘Louisiana’s Main Street). The idea is as much symbolic as it is logical. The entire street (Lodi to Jackson Ext to Jackson across the River to Pineville Main St to Donahue Ferry) really is our community’s Main Street. And, going across the river from South to North, it bridges not only the cities of Alexandria and Pineville, but also the cultures of East, West, South, & North Louisiana.

Aside from Pineville though, another area with great potential that has been seemingly ignored is Bolton Avenue. When that was the main street of the old ‘West End’, it was the place to be in Cenla. It’s an area we should be looking at developing as best we can. A downtown cannot develop as an island.

As someone who has spent several years both pre and post Katrina living in New Orleans where the nice/tourist areas are all surrounded by anti-development I can tell you it doesn’t work.

I don’t have any total solutions, but I would echo the sentiments elsewhere on this board: get as much input as possible, don’t be greedy, and more than anything get people downtown and give them a reason to stay there.

Charlottesville, VA and Kenosha, WI (just south of Racine by about 15 minutes).

C-Ville really is the superior model for Alexandria. They started with closing off Main St. to pedestrian traffic only. This red brick street was lined with local retailers selling furniture, books, music, and clothing. At one end was city hall, and the other end was an Omni Hotel. It also had the bar where the Dave Matthews Band started. Over the years it has improved. Parking issues were resolved by a multi-level garage owned by the city being built one block away from the pedestrian mall. Restaurants, both fast food chains and “white linen” gourmet, opened in the vacancies remaining on the street. An ice skating rink opened across from the hotel, and a four-screen movie theatre opened a couple of doors down from the skating rink. The area also had a one-screen “art-house” theatre around the corner from the hotel. On the upper floors of the buildings on the street, loft apartments and condominiums began to fill with tenants, and a budding dotcom industry populated the office space. The businesses on the downtown “mall” did an excellent job making it attractive for professionals with after-hours events during the week. They also made it very family friendly with the inclusion of the ice skating rink, the theatre, and fast food (of the Chili’s and TGIFridays variety, not McDonald’s or Popeyes), and a Baskin-Robbin ice cream parlor.

Kenosha, WI, has done an excellent job with creating modern and attractive town home and condominium complexes on the Lake Michigan waterfront. They added a street car service recently with success, though not overwhelming. The waterfront developers have also added farmers’ markets and weekend festivals to the mix. There is a successful marina and several local restaurants have joined the few older local institutions.

Alexandria really can learn a lot from both towns. I remember talk a few years ago of making downtown into an arts district, with many wanting antique shops and artist studios providing the bulk of tenants to the area. I’ve always liked the idea of these kinds of shops, but I don’t want this to make up the definition of downtown re-development. I think we’d be stuck with junk shops and untalented twits hocking second-rate trinkets and canvasses if we dedicate our efforts to that. What would be great would be concentrating on several goals:

1. Bring restaurants downtown. The Diamond Grill is a terrific start. The lunch counter at the drug store is decent for the lunch crowd. It would be better if we could have a good tex-mex place, a barbecue joint, or a Chinese restaurant that would each be unique but concentrate on good food in a high quality atmosphere. A Chili’s or a TGIFridays downtown would do well to help, if not a Pizza Hut or BJ’s. Steal the idea from C’ville of putting a movie theatre downtown or an ice skating rink, and combined with restaurants you create an atmosphere that will attract families to go downtown on the weekends.

2. Restore the convention business downtown. Before too long Natchitoches will be the best location for conventions in the central part of Louisiana. Alexandria already has the natural advantages of the Bentley, Holiday Inn, and the Riverfront Center. Get these guys under one marketing group and start selling this town as the best spot for state conventions. It’s a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg argument but adding more convention business would also help with the development of the restaurant business downtown, especially for the better restaurants a la the Diamond Grill.

3. Build the marina and take advantage of the river for residential property. This step makes downtown revitalization self-sustainable. First downtown has some of the best views of the river in the parish, why not live down there for that reason alone? Second, the marina makes the river a more valuable resource for the residents of the city. Third, housing means people move downtown and become a population for businesses to attract as customers and politicians to heed as constituents.

If the Silvers would renovate the Weiss & Goldring building, it would be a perfect spot to divide into the kinds of restaurants I’m thinking of. They could enjoy leasing the space if they don’t want to be in the restaurant business. Over a period of time it would help increase the value of the property and make it productive for the city. Certainly doing that would be better than letting it sit there growing mold. The Louisiana Nightmares building should be recycled into something — anything — that would have year-round appeal and business (or couldn’t LSUA use another building for classrooms downtown?). The Masonic building is a condo complex waiting to happen. I could go on and on…

My ultimate point here is that we should have some very specific goals in mind when we talk about downtown revitalization. Other cities around the country are doing what I’m writing about here, and I hope that these cities have provided us with a wheel we don’t have to re-invent. We are luckier than these other places because we have so many advantages they don’t; it’s unfortunate we haven’t started sooner. It’s unfortunate, but not too late.