Core Area Urban Renewal Plan.

So the city of Bend is pushing a "Core Area" urban renewal plan. I'm no expert, so take my opinion with a huge blood pressure raising grain of salt, but...

As far as I can tell, the basic plan it to try to revive the area around 3rd Street which is currently consists of a bunch of out-of-date storefronts and rather ugly large chain stores. The idea, I believe, is to make the area more pedestrian and bike friendly--an expanded downtown, so to speak.

I remember when 3rd Street was the "new" retail growth area and downtown Bend was neglected. (Downtown also emptied out because of the two malls--ironically both of which are gone or have changed radically.) Part of what's happened is, the 3rd Street area has just aged, and aged badly.

Downtown instituted a "tax-increment" plans around the same time. Slowly but surely, downtown came back. How much of that was because of the tax-increment and how much would have happened anyway through natural gentrification, I couldn't tell you. Cheap rents attract bohemian but thread-bare businesses, which makes the downtown core attractively funky, which then attracts businesses with real money behind them, which mostly fail but improve the looks each time they fail, and downtown continually fails upward but eventually a few businesses hold on and become standard bearers while ironically most of the original bohemian business are forced out. Creative destruction in real time.

I was there. I watched it happen.

It wasn't foregone and it was messy and there were times when it could have gone either way. No doubt, the invested tax money helped but--I believe the improvements would have happened anyway. But I also think it kick-started the change.

So the tax increment plan seems to me to be worth a try, however...

It's what they do with the money that I'm worried about. (Well, not worried since I don't think I'll be around when it all happens...) The ideas I've seen floated seem pretty pie-in-the-sky grandiose. Trying to force a business district to be cool-looking probably doesn't work. I think it's a more organic process--that is, individual businesses willing to take a chance, to hopefully find a cheaper rent neglected area to start their businesses and grow from there.

All the landscaping in the world won't change anything except maybe to make rent more expensive.

I'm skeptical that "urban renewal" really works without private investment; that it can't be mandated from above.

I'm worried that it's going to be another Juniper Ridge boondoggle.

Investing the property tax money back into the district makes sense, as long as the plans are realistic and achievable.

They need to "do no harm" to the existing businesses, which is pretty hard to do when you're tearing up streets and sidewalks and making other "improvements."

Like I said, I thought the plans I saw a few years ago seemed really unrealistic. Linda and I owned the Bookmark at the time, and if they had instituted their plans, we wouldn't have survived I'm pretty sure. Which seems a bit counter-productive.

All I'm saying is--let change happen naturally with a bit of a boost, help the EXISTING businesses do better, and don't think that throwing money at the problem is the answer.