I have been blessed to travel a great deal during my life. What I remember most about cities are vibrant downtowns. Makes no difference, be it small or big city, American or foreign city … it’s that beating heart, that sense of place, that something special that downtowns deliver. In general, when we talk about our impression of cities we are talking about the central core, the downtown … this is the reason a favorable downtown experience is absolutely critical.
In my own city, Little Rock, when I was growing up, downtown was “the place” … then we lost it. We tried to fix it but nothing worked , nothing until the early nineties, when we embarked on a two year long community visioning exercise involving hundreds of citizens. This effort called “Future Little Rock”, in addition to many other goals, emphatically recommended a commitment to the revitalization of our downtown. Out of this came the River Market, the farmer’s market pavilions, the reuse of old warehouses for the Central Arkansas Library and the Museum of Discovery, the expansion of our Convention Center, a River Rail Trolley, shops, restaurants, parks improvements, bike trails, railroad bridges given to pedestrians, etc… etc… etc… all total, since then, over Two Billion Dollars in Public and Private dollars in a relatively small area of our city. Had we not had this commitment, we would not today have the Clinton Library, Heifer International and Acxiom office tower downtown. We would not have reached the tipping point where, once again, downtown is the place to be, the place to play, shop, be entertained, live, exercise, be culturally enriched and, of course, go to work. All this because a few hundred of our two hundred thousand citizens decided “the time is now”.
Jim Dailey 