Lots of blog fodder on this trip. But I wanted to start with something that really leaped out at me.

The downtown core areas of both Albany and Corvallis were huge compared to Bend. If you count Wall and Bond and say Brooks, and Minnesota and Oregon, Greenwood and Franklin, we have maybe a total of 12 city blocks.

Albany looked at least twice the size, if not more, and so did Corvallis.

Which makes sense when you figure that during the time these zones were being created, Bend was probably 1/4 to 1/3 the size of either Albany or Corvallis.

What becomes very noticeable is that even when a block seems to be reviving -- slightly -- only a block or two away there are shuttered buildings. In other words, they have a steeper hill to climb, with such a large area to fill. They look like they are on the path, and making good choices, but I think that what happened to Bend is unusual, and at least some of it comes down to a town that is now BIGGER than either Corvallis and Albany, but with much less downtown space to fill up, which had never occurred to me before.

We were wandering around downtown Albany, and came across the Visitor's center. I casually asked the clerk was the average rent was, and she insisted I talk to the head of the retailer's Downtowners. I got my answer, about 1.00 or less than half Bend, and we kept talking -- at completely cross purposes. I'd start to try to describe downtown Bend, and he'd excitedly tell me that Albany had the same thing, and how Albany was starting to boom, and how high end everything was and how little vacancies there were.

Well, I'd just strolled through much of downtown Albany and it didn't look anything like Bend. Finally, I just said. "Look, you really need to visit Bend to get a true idea of what's happening...."

So, like I said yesterday, I think both Albany and Corvallis, while not dis functional, would kill to have Bend's look and feel and foot traffic, and, dare I say it, mix of retail.

I had a long talk with my friend Wes Hare, and we had a different take on how Bend revived. I think there was a large portion of luck, happenstance, and statistical anomaly. For instance, the first major impact on downtown did not come from the mass market, per se, or at least the usual culprits of WalMart and Target, etc. We had two malls open, which had some big anchor stores, (mostly department stores like Sears and Penny's and The Bon, which aren't quite the category killers that Walmart and Staples and Home Depot are) around 1980. But because of a recession, we had a 10 year moratorium on competition and downtown Bend had a chance to fill back up, mostly with Bohemian mom and pop types. How do you predict that a lone developer would attempt to renovate the old post office, or that the tunesmith of the Carpenter's songs would use some of his money to renovate the O'Kane building?

Wes, who is a city manager, (Albany) believes that Bend had some advantages and some visionaries and some good planning. He points to Mt. Bachelor, Sunriver, etc. as examples. But of course it is his job, his experience, his belief that managers plan and cities then evolve along their plans. I don't want to speak for him, or misrepresent his views, but I think the split between his view that it was both planned and inevitable, and mine that it was happenstance and luck, is pretty clear.

The truth, no doubt, is somewhere in between. But you can see what a huge obstacle these downtown cores have to surmount. Success breeds success, and empty storefronts breed empty storefronts. Personally, the outlying malls and outlet stores and big boxes that surround Albany and Corvallis are completely boring and uninteresting. It's hard to believe that American's have chosen that model of business to give their money to.