The demise of our downtowns

Paul W. Barada

I was walking down Main Street last week and it was one of the saddest things I’ve ever done. Within the space of just three blocks I counted at least nine vacant buildings – and there could have been more than that. I became so depressed looking down the street, I could have miscounted. We’ve almost reached the point where there are more vacant buildings than there are occupied buildings with actual businesses in them. What’s even worse, there doesn’t appear to be anything at all being done about the slow and tragic death of Rushville’s central business district…and the longer the buildings remain unoccupied, the more they’re going to deteriorate. That means – eventually – more demolition and more vacant lots or, worse yet, more parking lots. Before long, as I’ve written before, there’s will be plenty of parking downtown, but there’ll be no reason to come downtown because most of the buildings will be empty.

For the people living in Rush County’s smaller communities, there’s probably not too much concern about the pending demise of downtown Rushville because they’ve been through it. Their downtowns dried up and blew away long ago, except for one or two businesses here and there on their main streets. What we could end up with is a beautiful courthouse sitting in the middle of a ghost town. Not long ago the mayor talked about seeking a grant for a feasibility study for façade restoration in the central business district. If the outcome of that study suggests viability, we would be looking at a grant to restore the fronts of many of the downtown buildings, assuming there’s any reason to restore the front of an empty building. Façade restoration could come too late to save what’s left of downtown. Worse yet, I don’t see anybody or any organization trying to do anything to stop the departure of downtown businesses. I realize times are tough, but if nothing is done, you can bet that nothing is going to happen – except that the downtown will continue shrinking. Even during good economic times, people were so fickle. Instead of supporting the downtown merchants, when there were some, people drove to the malls, instead, in hopes of saving a buck.

Talk is cheap, you say? What can be done to keep downtown Rushville from turning into a ghost town? The first and least expensive thing that could be done is a simple survey of service businesses in and around Indianapolis to see how many would be interested in moving here, based on our lower tax rates, lower crime rate, good schools, less expensive housing, less traffic congestion, and lower building maintenance and operating costs. I’m talking about a simple survey, hand-carried if necessary, to see if owners of service businesses would have any interest in the cost savings they could realize in Rush County, as opposed to Indianapolis. Can anybody locally be enticed to undertake such a simple project? Apparently not – and the number of empty buildings continues to grow.

There was a time when downtown Indianapolis was in about the same fix, back in the days when it was derisively called “Naptown.” But city and civic leaders exerted some leadership, and everybody knows that the central part of the city experienced a re-birth of major proportions. We can’t expect the same sort of resurrection – it’s not likely that we’ll attract any professional sports franchises here, but on a smaller scale, there’s no reason why downtown Rushville has to continue to die on the vine. Other towns have redefined themselves and we could, too, if anybody in a position of authority would have a little vision and exert some leadership.

If I were among the handful of remaining merchants on Main Street, I’d be more than just a little concerned about the declining number of nearby businesses. Once upon a time, there used to be a downtown merchants association. There hardly are enough merchants left to fill a phone booth, but before that phone booth is totally empty, I think I’d be rallying the troops to start attending ECDC meetings, and Chamber meetings, and city council meetings demanding action. If nothing else, the city could put together a package of inducements to lure viable Main Street service businesses here. The Chamber could be promoting Main Street as a good place to do business. The ECDC could be conducting that survey I alluded to earlier. Or we can continue to do nothing and ask the last merchant left standing to be sure to turn out the lights on Main Street on the way out.

Another challenge Main Street is facing is the widening of the street so there can be left turn lanes from the railroad north to at least 11th or 12th street – and you know what that means – cutting down every tree that lines Main Street to make it more convenient for the motoring public to turn left. Yes, that makes lots of sense. Let’s destroy the trees all along Main Street so people can get downtown to all the new parking lots.

And yet, we just continue to sit on our hands doing nothing about the loss of businesses and the destruction of the beautiful shade trees so that the motoring public won’t have to wait an arduous two or three minutes before making a left turn. Towns like this one don’t fall apart by themselves. They fall apart because nobody cares enough to actually do anything about it.

That’s —30— for this week.



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