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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels October 2, 2004 Downtown is always in flux By Emily Morris Tidings Correspondent In the 1960s, Main Street was lined with garish signs, crisscrossed by overhead wires. According to the city's 1966 comprehensive plan, it was a visually unappealing city. A new brick building housing a real estate office and an insurance company sits at the corner of East Main and Second streets where an automotive shop used to sit. Denise Baratta | Ashland Daily Tidings The plan described a downtown in bad condition, "from the generally run-down conditions of many of its buildings ... incongruent storefronts and dilapidated backs ... the unappealing downtown has not kept up with Ashland's emergence as a tourist destination." Today, the downtown is an attractive combination of stores concentrated within a six block radius that cater mainly to tourists. Not by accident, it is a cultural mecca of the Rogue Valley, offering professional theaters, high-quality restaurants and chic boutiques. John Billings, a resident since 1918, has witnessed most of Ashland's history, and still thinks of the Plaza as uptown. The expensive downtown certainly makes it feel like uptown, but it took a while to get there. Dubbed "Little Chicago" during prohibition because of bootlegging activity, Ashland had morphed into a lumber town by the '50s. Not until the early '60s, when only one sawmill remained, did city planners recognize their potential and made a conscious decision to transform a seedy downtown into an attractive tourist destination, said Brian Almquist, city administrator from 1970 to 1997. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival began in 1935 as local entertainment, and developed a regional draw, helping mold Ashland into a tourist destination. A city in transition A strict sign ordinance enacted in 1967 and construction of the Angus Bowmer Theater as an OSF addition in 1970 were keystones to downtown improvement, Almquist said. In the early '70s, a strict urban growth boundary was enacted, putting a cap on space availability but not future demand. That time period saw downtown torn up as utility lines were placed underground, trees planted, and streetlights replaced to make it more attractive, Almquist said. "There was a synergy," as merchants started investing their own money in beautification, Almquist said. Locals remember downtown in the '60s and '70s as catering to locals. "There were a lot of logging families here in the early '60s, I remember," said Sid DeBoer, a second generation Ashland businessman. DeBoer and his wife Karen, who also grew up in the area, remember when Alex's Plaza Restaurant and Bar was an apartment space. In the '60s, everyone shopped at downtown Hanby's Market, but went to the Whitehouse Grocery on the Plaza for their meat, said Karen. She said the the elegant Chateaulin Restaurant was where people bought fresh doughnuts, and everyone went to Perrine's mercantile store on the Plaza for their clothes when she grew up. "Perrine's was a working man's store, the last mercantile store. It left in the late '70s," Almquist said. The DeBoers and Almquist agree that downtown's rising prices and shift in focus has been a gradual and continuous change. DeBoer said a market change occurred all over America, luring necessity stores away from downtown, into malls and big chains. With tourism, Ashland's downtown was able to successfully undergo an inevitable transition, he said. "Logging left this town with nothing," DeBoer said. "Now we are the cultural center of the Rogue Valley. Provincialism is gone; we're not going to get to log the trees anymore." The early 1980s was marked by recession; the Mark Antony filed for bankruptcy and sat vacant for 16 years before it was renovated into the Ashland Springs Hotel, complete with a spa and Sunday high tea. In 1982 spaces sat empty, according to local historian Marjorie O'Hara in her book "Ashland in Transition." Enter the tourists Tourism rebounded and the downswing ended. But according to the 1988 downtown plan, the city's economy was heavily dependent on the college, local schools, government agencies and tourists. Livability sold easier to retirees than manufacturers, and the economic base became weak. According to O'Hara, at one point in the 1950's there were a dozen lumber mills within the city limits, and by 1973 four manufacturing plants made up the city's entire industrial sector. Tourism flourished and other cultural amenities followed - fine-dining establishments, theaters, artists and their galleries, Almquist said. In the '80s, the city renovated City Hall, statues, the Butler-Perozzi Fountain and the Plaza. However, not all locals can rely on tourism. A city survey in 1989 listed some of residents' top concerns as similar to today's: job availability, affordable housing and preserving the small town feeling among others. The popular local Bloomsbury Books has been operating in Ashland for 24 years, the last 14 at 290 E. Main St. One of the owners, Karen Chapman, said Ashland was a much different place when she moved here in 1970. "The city has lost some of its diversity and things have come and gone; it seems like there are changes, but often for the better," Chapman said. Chapman said rent is high and increasing, but at the same time the few concentrated city blocks create a lot of pedestrian traffic. "We couldn't possibly be the size we are in such a small town without tourists. They make us possible," she said. A continuing trend Almquist predicts downtown space and housing prices will only get worse, making independent "mom and pop" stores economically unfeasible. Ashland's natural beauty, livability and tight urban growth boundaries have driven up property prices exponentially, he said. "Most of Ashland's funkiness is gone. It is getting very high end - that's not bad, just different. The concern is that young families can't afford to come here anymore," Almquist said. One of the last bastions of funkiness downtown, Evo's Java House, is owned by Almquist's daughter, Jane. Evo's has been operating at its downtown location on the corner of Main Street and Gresham for 11 years now, and the rent goes up every year, said Jane. "It seems like bigger changes quicker," said Jane, "The new public works building (community development building) was my first glimpse. Then the library construction (2002) and new fire station (2003)," she said. The sale of Harrison's Auto Parts recently makes Evo's one of the few downtown shops not reliant on tourism. "I had a friend who said, 'It is you and Harrison's Auto Parts. When you're out of here, I'm out of here,'" Jane said. Almquist is not sure how the community can turn the rising cost trend, and wonders if anyone really wants to. "I am not sure seeing a Crate and Barrel or Thomas Kincaid gallery downtown is necessarily bad," he mused. "Do we want an ugly community again?" DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams