A visiting journalist stopped by my office the other day to get some background on Texarkana and its newspaper.
No sooner did she sit down than she popped the question, "What happened to downtown?"
That wasn't expected.
I was taken aback, set on my heels, dumbfounded. My mind raced wildly in all directions for a proper answer to a blunt question.
Not that I didn't understand the underpinnings of the question, I just didn't see it coming.
We all know that our downtown needs some work. But no one had ever asked me to explain it as if it had a single point of origin. In local conversations, we almost always talk about what we're trying to do and gloss over downtown's current status, ignoring its plodding journey into disarray because, frankly, there is nothing we can do about it now. We locals revel in small victories and ignore the string of larger defeats.
When someone asks you "what happened ?" the implication seems to demand a link to a particular event, like a bomb going off or a tornado ripping through.
No, nothing so concrete. This is all about slow decay, lack of attention, competing priorities and a dearth of public and private investment and interest. It is about decisions to follow the crowd to more fertile ground, leaving it for others to grapple with a reality doomed to get progressively grimmer over several decades.
And, of course, the question itself implied that downtown is a mess-criticism cloaked as a question-so the natural response is to be defensive.
How did it get this way? How did it get this way? How did it get this way?
I'm smart, been here a good while, I should know the answer.
Not all at once, that's for sure, but one defection after another to greener pastures.
At some point, I came to my senses and started pointing out some of the highlights of downtown. And there are many.
But others don't always see this place as we do. We look past the obvious flaws to find the hidden gems. They, on the other hand, are struck blind by their first impression. When they swing around the sturdy and dignified Downtown Post Office and into the heart of the city, the first thing that registers with them is not all the cool things they don't see, but the conspicuous imperfections they do see.
And this was not a writer who came here with the expectation of coming downtown and seeing finely manicured cityscapes. No presumption of perfection preexisted, but maybe one of basic propriety.
I thought later I should have taken her on a tour, shown her some things. But somewhere in my head, I was still reeling from, "What happened to downtown?"
It is not good that that question is the first thing out of a visitor's mouth.
There are a lot of nice pieces downtown: businesses, restaurants, entertainment venues, landmarks, parks, preservation projects, but there are a lot of eyesores that clog up the spaces between them. The return to relevance has been an excruciatingly slow process.
Downtowns, when cared for, are special places. We can look north and see all the development along Interstate 30, restaurant row, retailers and banks of hotels-all fairly new and sensible. It is something to be proud of. It looks well-kept and somewhat in step with the times. It also looks like every other strip of interstate highway development in mid-size cities: predictable, name-brand buildings bobbing in seas of concrete.
No one wraps their arms around interstate development like they wrap their arms around downtown. Our box stores and shopping plazas are not as warm and fuzzy. No one says "what happened?" when they come upon them, true, but no one says "Wow!" either.
It's 3 miles from I-30 to downtown Texarkana on State Line Avenue, but visitors make their way there with some frequency-maybe more so than locals.
Maybe we should consider the way visitors see things. It may cause us to pause, if not move us to action.
We have many things worthy of pride in Texarkana, but the packaging in some places needs improvement.