Downtown Belleville Struggles Over Identity (BND)

shimmy · PostSep 07, 2008#12008-09-07T18:01+00:00

Downtown living: Belleville struggling to find its identity

BY LAURA GIRRESCH

News-Democrat

BELLEVILLE --

Downtown Belleville, after years of deterioration and the subsequent millions of dollars the city has pumped into improving it, is now like a kid right out of college -- polished, ready and ripe for opportunity.

But some people who live downtown say the newly restored district also is struggling to decide what it wants to be when it grows up.

David Carr moved to an apartment above Isenhart Tax & Financial Services at 119 W. Main St. about four years ago because he liked the prospect of being able to walk everywhere he needed to go. He also looked forward to watching parades from his front window.

After watching storefronts gradually deteriorate, he was pleased with the $7 million streetscape improvements on Main Street, including the old-fashioned street lamps that he said brighten the sidewalks and make the corridor feel safer.

But in the past couple of years, the 25-year-old artist said, business at existing and new bars has taken over the district at night, transforming it into a party strip like Laclede's Landing in St. Louis.

http://www.bnd.com/homepage/story/463496.html

doug · PostSep 08, 2008#22008-09-08T13:41+00:00

Downtown Belleville really is the best small town in this region. It's so damn in tact! Imagine if Granite City had their vision!

My favorite part:

Eckert said that in the 1960s, when he was a child, downtown was full of major chain stores, such as J.C. Penney and Sears. He said that before St. Clair Square opened in Fairview Heights, people came to downtown Belleville from all over Southern Illinois to go shopping.

But the business landscape has changed in the past 30 years, Eckert said, and downtown will never be the shopping mecca it once was.

Wait, you mean sprawl kills downtowns? BAH-ZING!

mark wegmann · PostOct 01, 2008#32008-10-01T13:38+00:00

If memory serves me Belleville had the opportunity to have St. Clair Sq. but chose not to move forward, imagine if it was close to DT which would have HELPED bring more prople into DT and kept the area vibrant. this certainly didn't help matters.

Further, Belleville is NOT the same community it was 30 years ago either, I'd suggest this change also contributed to the decline of DT..

threeonefour · PostOct 01, 2008#42008-10-01T13:49+00:00

Mark Wegmann wrote:If memory serves me Belleville had the opportunity to have St. Clair Sq. but chose not to move forward, imagine if it was close to DT which would have HELPED bring more prople into DT and kept the area vibrant. this certainly didn't help matters.

Further, Belleville is NOT the same community it was 30 years ago either, I'd suggest this change also contributed to the decline of DT..

I wasn't around when decisions were made, so maybe this is wrong, but I have also heard that Belleville objected to the original proposed route of Interstate 64, which would have brought the highway much closer to downtown. Instead, I-64 was built about 5-6 miles north of downtown, and when St. Clair Square opened in the early 1970s, the exodus began.

I'd say what's going on in downtown Belleville these days is a good problem. I think the balance of bars to other establishments will eventually even out anyway just as it has in other downtowns or business districts that mature after the initial wave of revitalization that made development there attractive in the first place.

jlblues · PostOct 02, 2008#52008-10-02T19:51+00:00

Mark Wegmann wrote:If memory serves me Belleville had the opportunity to have St. Clair Sq. but chose not to move forward, imagine if it was close to DT which would have HELPED bring more prople into DT and kept the area vibrant. this certainly didn't help matters.

Uhh, how would it have done that? They didn't know anything about "lifestyle" centers or new urbanism back then, so I'd say it is far more likely downtown Belleville would have just deteriorated that much faster, and it would now just be one large sea of asphalt, strip malls, and suburban designed and scaled hotels and office buildings, just like Fairview Heights is now.

Ok, I suppose ultimately you are right. It would have brought "more people" to "downtown" Belleville. The problem is, that there would no longer be anything resembling a downtown there.

shimmy · PostOct 02, 2008#62008-10-02T21:12+00:00

^I agree. Belleville, especially downtown, is a really neat town. I don't know if it would be that with a shopping mall and a highway crashing through it. As ThreeOneFour alluded too, I don't think it has to try to be anything. Whatever it becomes it will become organically (for lack of a better term) and not because it tried to be it.

jlblues · PostOct 02, 2008#72008-10-02T21:45+00:00

Shimmy wrote:^I agree. Belleville, especially downtown, is a really neat town. I don't know if it would be that with a shopping mall and a highway crashing through it. As ThreeOneFour alluded too, I don't think it has to try to be anything. Whatever it becomes it will become organically (for lack of a better term) and not because it tried to be it.

Organically is the correct term, Grasshopper.

Highways and giant shopping malls aren't the solution to anything in an historic and even quasi-urban environment. The results of following those practices over the last half-century should make that quite clear to anyone.

southsidepride · PostOct 02, 2008#82008-10-02T22:00+00:00

yeah, from what I understand from the folks who helped designate South Main Street in St. Charles as a historic district in the late 60's early 70's there was discussion of razing those old buildings and building a shopping center there.

Just like Belleville and St. Clair Square some in St. Chuck complain that all the "useful retail" is in St. Peters (big box and Mid Rivers Mall) but I think in the end both towns are glad they didn't demolish their unique town centers for bland malls that are going the way of the dodo bird now anyways.