“THE CHARMS OF DOWNTOWN - AN ART PERSPECTIVE”

If you can visualize taking the charms of our lovely city center one step at a time, visualize this: think of it as a “ramble”, a social scene, an informal stage for strolling among beautiful landscaped walkways and home to lots of unusual shops. A “DOWNTOWN PARK” matching closely the landscaping at LCC, CIVIC Circle, etc.

If our landscaping could be expanded to include curving walkways, concrete edged with red bricks (to echo the many brick buildings that make up our downtown.

Expanses of lawn (with sprinkler systems), flower beds converted into long brick edged boxes filled with hedging (year-round green) for the rainy months. Street Traffic relegated to the many parking lots. Cars off-limits, or grudgingly accommodated. Flower baskets on the new Street Lights (with water systems installed). Think of the new maintenance jobs this would entail (to the joy of those laid off by the Parks Department).

Roundabouts at the east-west entrys, with plantings, bricks, concrete, fountains and sculptures, doing away with signal lights. All north-south commerce completly closed to traffic. Alleys are for Truck Deliveries. 12th & 14th should provide double lines of angle parking (doing away with the One-ways…those vast expanses of pavement. If wider street arrea is needed, cut-off the xtra wide sidewalks. We don’t need 15’ sidewalks. Parking lots exist in every block, providing a short walk over to the main drag from Vandercook way south for five blocks. New signage indicating Parking Areas (Free). Poster Kiosks announcing events. Log Arches at crucial entry spots..so people can find us.

Though we do not have the flavor of medieval roots - we do certainly have the flavor of our forest ancestry. If we can see into the future of our downtown as a lovely park edged with trees, flowers, fountains and areas of grass….and lots of people strolling the area while doing their shopping, what a lovely downtown we could create.

Many are the types of shops serving a bustling downtown from 7 or 8 AM through the early evening hours. Dining out becomes a destination as well as theater and entertainment venues. During the day are shopping hours: specialty food shops, Brew Pubs, Donuts & Coffee, Clothing, Jewelry, Awards, Boutiques, things made in Longview (of interest to tourists, furniture stores, custom framing and art galleries. Even a small museum with historic items and, of course, a new small hotel.

Seems like our downtown ought to be at least as beautiful as our LCC Campus and the Rose Center, in order to tie the two together and as a wonderful addition to Lake Sacajawea and our Civic Circle Park. This is a vision for year round beauty. A renovation of our historic area that might bring more people into this area to see and do all the things we have to offer.

Stop in at Teague’s and view a small scale model of this vision!