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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 29, 2005 More is not better for theaters or the town By Susan Marsden Ashland In a recent editorial the Daily Tidings opined that increasing building development in Ashland’s downtown would help struggling businesses survive and cited the closure of Artattack Theater as one case in point. I don’t know how many small theaters the Tidings editors have worked for, but as a person who has worked for more than a few, I can assure you that small theaters are very difficult to sustain nearly anywhere. That is even more true in the very peculiar circumstances of Ashland where we have the thriving mega-theater, OSF, multiple smaller theaters, and a resident population of only 20,000 people. Find me another town this size that would think for one second it could support so many live theaters. People don’t go to the theater because they happen to live downtown and wander by. They go to the theater because their friends and neighbors and the local paper all say, “Don’t miss this show!” You can put a small theater in the heart of a bustling city — as most are — and they’ll still often fail. But perhaps failure is not the right word. They offer tremendous creative rewards to the people who work in them, and they often bring something valuable to the audience that attends them for as long as they last. Certainly the closure of Artattack had nothing to do with the population density of downtown, and virtually everything to do with stiff competition for people’s theater dollars. The Tidings’ proposal seems to be suggesting that if we build enough big buildings downtown and move people into them that we can support another theater, or shop, or whatever. Those theaters and shops are services that support the population; it makes no sense to argue that we should inflate the population to support the businesses. The same argument floats around regarding the elementary schools. In any other town you have enough schools to house the students, but here people make the peculiar argument that we should generate more students to fill the schools. Schools and theaters and shops are services. They are here because we are here, not vice versa. And then there is the “progress” argument. This one seems to be a favorite of developers. There is an explicit argument here that density, huge profits, increased business activity, population and more traffic are “progress,” while preserving a small-town character, slowing growth and protecting our pace and quality of life are purely the fixations of those stuck in the past. How utterly wrong that view is. Growth for growth’s sake, urbanization, exploiting an attractive town as a money machine — that is the retrograde thinking. Many people here have come from other places that were destroyed by that kind of “progress.” The better, newer model of progress is one where scale and pace and charm and history are worth going to the mat for, and I can only hope our elected and appointed officials and our townspeople will fight tooth and claw for that vision of our future. That would be progress, indeed. Or else we go the way of countless other lovely little towns lost before us. That loss won’t happen because of one building project or another, but it will happen when we lose the nerve to fight to preserve Ashland. If done right, tourist towns can support industry By Thomas Walters Ashland I enjoyed the editorial of June 18. Touching as it did initially on the sad closure of Artattack, it asked questions about how best to do what is necessary to invigorate a local business climate and diversify away from a tourist-based economy. In a recent letter I called for a building moratorium, based largely on perceived growth outside the town center, and would like to further comment. Ashland is my third tourist-based community. Sausalito, Calif., where I lived for 26 years, has tremendous problems dealing with the issues of affordable housing, never getting past the issue, due in part to the close proximity of Marin City and outrageous property cost. They did have mixed-use buildings with street-level shops and upstairs residences. This was more a result of historical use and not a modern development. Most of it was not affordable to shop clerks and public-service staff who worked in the community. Expansion was out of the question, being largely hemmed in by the bay and a formidable ridge. Petaluma, Calif., where I lived before moving to Ashland, is in the long-overdue throes of cleaning up the downtown by developing barren dirt lots, just a block from the town center. My last visit was rewarded with the sight of attractive, well-designed apartment buildings with shops at street level. New shops and businesses were opening and the structures were no taller than the structures they replaced. The architecture blends beautifully with the Victorian style of the area. The streets surrounding the town center were finally getting the necessary infrastructure updates and resurfacing, whose neglect had earned Petaluma the distinction of having the worst-maintained streets in the Bay Area. Change is coming, but it has been part of a long process, guided by a carefully crafted Master Plan which Petaluma fought for all the way to the Supreme Court. Thanks to that effort, the economic base of Petaluma has been able to provide attractive office complexes which house such industry giants as Cisco Systems and other high-tech industries, allowing the community to diversify away from farming and tourism. The proposals for downtown Ashland have some promise, especially those buildings with mixed use. Europeans have shown a facility for providing combined shops and residences in the town center for centuries. It is such an ingrained part of their culture and often serves to keep traffic at a minimum while simultaneously invigorating the center. I would hope that a height limit, preferably no more than three stories, be observed. I guess my big concern is mainly that the majority of unattractive growth is taking place in the areas away from the center and eating up open space. If the city would use some of the undeveloped land to provide a park here and there, away from the center, that would be well-received and a good start. As far as I know, there hasn't been any discussion about keeping some of the rural atmosphere to the edges of our beautiful community. Businessmen, too, have to smell the flowers. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams