Lamar, Colorado Skids Sideways Into Urban Renewal
It’s there on the horizon, the storm that will either wrap the community in life giving rains or shred local businesses with financial splintering lightening that reeks havoc on residents and tourists alike. Which will it be?
Lamar City Planner, Bob Ward, indicated, “I’ve been to this rodeo before. Unless someone takes the bull by the horns and drives the plan to success, this plan won’t be any different than any other.” His assistant, Cheryl Newman, said, “We need name acts coming in every three weeks to build interest and give Lamar credibility as a thriving community. Without them, nobody knows we’re here.”
Talk of cleaning up downtown, improving facades, and building the bypass around the Lamar waved randomly through the meeting Monday as Citizens and Community Leaders focused on what’s wrong with Lamar, and what’s RIGHT with Lamar. Although there were a few specific complaints, mostly surrounding the missing community feel of thirty years ago, there were many more positives. The community as a whole stands on SOLID Ground, according to Jamie Licko, a Marketing Guru brought in from Denver, Colorado.
Using an Action Plan Scenario, Licko indicated that small amounts of cash can make BIG changes in the community, resurrecting the neighborhood feeling. Such simple suggestions as warmer colors on the store fronts, friendlier window decor, open inviting greetings as customers come through the door of various establishments, and dressing up the vacant windows downtown were offered. None of these things cost a lot, but for some of the business struggling to survive on main street, the cost of even minimal sprucing up can be prohibitive.
When the smoke clears and citizens of Lamar, Colorado realize how easy it is to step into the future with side-walk cafes, coffee shops downtown, and Wi-Fi connection for those who must work while the family shops, and other amenities for local folks won’t they be glad they stepped up to the plate and did what was necessary? Isn’t there a way to encourage the people of this community to get in line with support for these awesome ideas and concepts? Where can we be in ten years, if we do join hands and become a community working together for the better good of the people?
As we kick and scream our way into the joys of Urban Renewal fighting even the idea of change, we begin to understand the concepts of addressing change in babysteps. We can’t progress all at once, it must come in tiny steps that make change easier to accept. Government has been changing our lives for literally decades and we haven’t noticed.
In the Radio Generation (pre-1955) children grew up opening the door to Fibber McGee’s closet, expecting the bowling ball to roll off the shelf. They picked it up, put it away, and went on about life. Nothing was expected to be perfect. Those children grew up, married, and overcame lifetimes of disaster and bowling balls falling off the shelf, but they survived, their marriages in tact.
The next generation (1955 – 1964) grew up with Father knows best. Father came home to children playing in the yard, dinner on the stove, dropped his shoes at the front door in exchange for his slippers, and found his pipe and smoking jacket in the den. Later, he was called to dinner after he’d had time to read the paper and enjoy his private time with children displaying perfect manners around a perfectly set table, and life was good. Those children grew up expecting Father Knows Best perfection and when bowling balls rolled off the closet shelf, they filed for divorce, left their imperfect families, and we became a nation of single parents struggling to survive an imperfect world.
Subsequent generations struggle with mere survival and bowling balls refuse to stay on the shelf. Lives blow up around us and nothing is perfect. We’ve lived through the imperfections but we’re scarred and damaged. Can we overcome these injuries and survive? I believe we can, but we can’t move back to the Father Knows Best Fiction we grew up with, it’s gone away and we can’t make it all better with an after dinner brandy. We need serious solutions for serious issues and we all need to know that it’s okay for the bowling balls to roll off the shelf every time we open the closet door. It’s okay if everything doesn’t match, the kids misbehave, and life goes on when we put the bowling ball back and close the door.
Urban Renewal doesn’t have to be about perfect building fronts, weedless back alleys, and painful fast changes. It can be about painting the back door, moving the trash can away from the back entry to the business, and adding a light fixture so parking behind the building is an option to the busy Main Street Parallel Parking ISSUE.
Lamar, Colorado is at the heart of America. What’s wrong with the heart of the GREATEST Nation on the Planet looking a little bit more like home?
Fibber McGee, did you close the closet door?
(Thank you to Ron Stock, City Administrator for the analogy.)
2 Responses to “Lamar, Colorado Skids Sideways Into Urban Renewal”
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