Thursday, November 01, 2007

Downtown

I get to downtown Cincinnati during a weekday three or four times a year. When I used to work downtown (12 years ago), the streets and sidewalks were crowed and nearly resembled Manhattan (for at least a few blocks).

So I went downtown today for a seminar. Man what a ghost town. Instead of Manhattan, it resembles downtown Lancaster.

As much of a free enterprise guy I am, it is disappointing to see a bustling downtown decay to a town square.

It seems to me that if the mental giants on Cincinnati City council want to inject life into the city, they really need to shift the mix of properties from office/retail to residential. I shelled out 8 bucks for three hours of parking. People are just not going to drive 40 minutes out of the way so they can pay to park when they can simply drive into a suburban shopping mall for free.

Or they can just keep managing to the lowest common denominator of city life and that's exactly what they'll have.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It will be worth going downtown to ride the streetcar four blocks.