From Jim Stalker
Creston
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the downtown/uptown area of town is in need of new businesses to occupy the empty buildings. There are many retail spaces that are lying empty, in need of renting to would-be entrepreneurs eager to try out their own business ideas.
I have been to many meetings over the years, each with a plan to improve the downtown and attract new business to it. We have had many problems to deal with: poor parking, poor traffic flow, streets too narrow. All of them leading to not enough customers. We tried to solve traffic flow with one-way streets for a few years. Getting people to use them correctly was a nightmare.
Later, after a few more years, we decided to go back to two-way streets. Same problem as we tried to reacclimate customers back to the two-way streets. There was even a discussion about widening our streets by narrowing our sidewalks, thus improving traffic flow.
Then there was the lifelong problem of business people taking customer spaces, hence the parking meter. The business people and their employees parked their vehicles right in front of their own businesses and other close-by businesses, thus shutting out convenience for customers.
During the time when the parking meter was in place, workers would just run out and feed the meters. The customer parking problem continued until at some point, there was an attempt to deal with that problem. Discussion was held to stay away from those valuable customer spaces. The plan worked pretty well until cold weather came, and then the whole plan fell apart.
There are certain courtesies that must be followed by businesses for their customers.
For example, when the Iowana was renovated into apartments, exclusive spaces were allotted for them in the parking lot a half block away. That has not worked out well, as most of them utilize spaces intended for business customers. Parking on opposite sides of the street in the downtown is not generally enforced year round as it was originally intended. Today’s situation in the uptown, because of the empty stores leaves more spaces available. But it is still important to keep away from existing and still surviving businesses, to leave the prime spots for customers. These solutions may seem trivial to some, but many trivial problems often build up into big problems. A little effort on all sides can’t hurt.