BarleyMcDougal said:
UBBY said:
I've been thinking about this recently. What will help downtown grow and develop for Waco? I've talked to many people in the Waco area and most of them say that you couldn't pay them to move downtown.
My mom and her family moved away from downtown during the late 1960's when the black community started to move in and around downtown and moved to Hewitt.
Is Magnolia a positive or negative for people to move downtown?
What are the problems and what are some possible solutions to this issue?
Sadly, downtown is situated very close to a very crappy part of town and it's surrounded by dilapidated houses. It's a mishmash of weird, unlike almost any other city I've seen. That tornado in the 50's really did a number on the city, followed by poor management which exists up to today. I've said it before, jokingly, that Waco needs to close off some streets, essentially removing them from being near the crappy neighborhoods.
Most downtowns are near a crappy part of town. Dallas has the Fair Park area. Houston is a giant slum with pockets of cool surrounded by some nice suburbs. New Orleans is like Houston.
If you want to go smaller, Tyler has the Locust drive ho hang-out just north of downtown.
I do agree that in the aftermath of the tornado some terrible decisions were made. Pushing all of the trash into the river made the river unusable and not attractive for development. I understand that people at the time were just trying to survive and didn't have alot of great options.
Waco faces the same chicken or the egg issues as other downtowns. They need jobs to attract people to attract development. And, they need development to attract people to attract jobs. As you get more development, other businesses will look at relocating or adding a large branch to downtown.
I think Magnolia is a catalyst to get the ball rolling. If it keeps growing, the people and then development will follow. I think the city is correctly trying to accelerate the process with TIF funding. If downtown keeps developing, Waco will be able to attract a branch of a company that has 200-300 jobs. Then later, another that adds 500-600 jobs and it will snowball up. Eventually, companies may look at relocating the HQ to Waco.