boiker said:
Ya.. Decatur.. poor.. poor Decatur. I don't know what you can do to fix that one. It just seems to be stuck in a post-industrial rut. not getting worse.. not getting better..and very vanilla.
Springfield should take advantage of the chip and become something great. It has a steadily increasing population, and a nice location for regional/state transportation needs, great recreational opportunities, more drive for preservation/reuse than Peoria.
Presrevation in Peoria.[/I]
illinoisplanner said:
Ditto that. I almost went with Springfield but had to be loyal to Rockford. It has great potential to be one of America's premier capital cities. With all the historical Lincoln attractions and everything, it is probably only 2nd to Chicago as far as tourism goes.
I agree with both of you. Springfield has a lot of potential. I think it has the potential to give Madison a run for its money, honestly. Unlike most Central Illinois towns, it isn't facing any serious "urban issues" (deindustralization, falling population, crime, poor schools, etc). In fact, it's doing good by just about any quantitative measure.
It doesn't have a major University (UIS doesn't count, it's small and way the hell out on an interstate interchange), but as
illinoisplanner pointed out, it has a good deal of tourism. That is an asset Madison doesn't have. Unfortunately most tourism comes from road trippers who stop through to see the Lincoln sites, or as part of a Route 66 trip (Springfield's contribution to Route 66 is that awful, tired 50s and 60s kitsch along Dirksen Parkway, but I guess that's what Route 66 tourists are looking for).
Downtown Springfield has the potential to be something really great. It has a good deal of intact fabric from the early 20th century and earlier. Most of the institutional buildings are 1930s WPA and City Beautiful era neoclassical structures. Mid-century institutional abortions (a la Albany and so many other state capitals) are largely nonexistent in downtown Springfield. There are exceptions of course, like the Willard Ice building and the Prairie State Convention Center (horrible 1980s urban renewal) but they certainly don't set the tone for downtown. In fact if anything, the tone is set by the wonderful City Beautiful complex surrounding the Capitol (which is itself one of the best statehouses in the country). The complex consists of the State Archive, the Secretary of State Building, the Supreme Court Building, the Armory, and much more recently, the State Library. Although the State Library was built in the 1990s, thankfully the
evil historicists won out against the architectural purists and the building was built neoclassical to fit into the surrounding complex.
The problem is that while downtown has a lot of great bits, the whole thing is rather disjointed, and that combines with the general lack of life in the area to make for a lackluster pedestrian environment. For instance, Springfield is lucky to still have a downtown train station (in an old IC station that was brilliantly restored a few years ago) but although it's only a few blocks from the Capitol Complex, almost the entire way is nothing but barren parking lots. There's been a lot of interest in revitalizing downtown Springfield, and like
boiker said, it has a healthy historical preservation culture, but I don't think there's anyone there who really parks their car and tries
walking around downtown. It's just not on people's minds so much. And that's why all the bits fall so short.
Of course things are changing. Like, a group made it their business to get a good set of bars (many fairly upscale, like a martini lounge) built downtown. It's become such a thing that my family now uses "going downtown" as a euphemism for going drinking. Like, "let's go downtown tonight." It wasn't at all like that when I was growing up. Downtown was alive from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM weekdays and depressingly dead otherwise. Now it's alive from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM and then dead until 9:00PM at which point it maintains some life until 1:00AM, especially on Friday and Saturday night. You're not going to build a bustling town like that, of course, unless some of the 20 somethings living in heartless apartment complexes in the west side sprawl realize that they can avoid getting a DUI if they just happened to live in one of those historical buildings right next to the bars downtown. So maybe that's the ticket: use drinking to draw young residents downtown, and then visitors won't be the only people walking around, and it won't be such a miserable pedestrian environment even with the barren zones. If you don't have a major University you've got to work with what you have.
At any rate, I think that if they could inject some life into downtown, with residents and activities, and really focus on a good pedestrian environment linking all of the downtown Lincoln sites and the train station and other major points of interest and employment centers (Capitol), Springfield could really be something great, especially if the Amtrak Statehouse Corridor (Chicago to St. Louis) finally gets the service upgrades many people envision. But even if not, people love driving to say, Charleston SC and parking their car and spending the rest of the day exploring on foot. I think that's what people really want out of a downtown tourist destination, and there are already a ton of Chicago based state workers who use Amtrak to get to Springfield. Having a pleasant walk to the Springfield office would make it a more attractive to use that as an option. The problem is, like I've said, I don't really think there are very many people in Springfield who think like that. Nearly everyone thinks only in terms of auto access. The city has no real traffic problems so the only impetus for pedestrianism is avoidance of DUIs, and while the population is expanding, young people who'd really like an urban environment (like me) are constantly getting poached by Chicago and, increasingly, St Louis, so there's a real "yuppie drain," as it were. So the main limitations of the town aren't related to its built environment, which has the potential to be very good, but rather, the mental blocks in place among the people trying to improve it.
Spend the evening on the Terrace. You might also check out the Arboretum or rent a lake kayk when you are in town. When you get back you can plead with the mods to change your vote.
