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Downtown Crime Problem Redux add-on

Here is an interesting paragraph from today’s NY Times relating to my last posting on the possible reemergence of downtown crime problems:

“In Trenton, a city of 85,000 where the police estimate that the Bloods have as many as 2,000 members, overall crime is down and officials say violence is largely confined to areas where gangs are most prevalent. But gang killings remain a persistent problem. There were 20 homicides in the city last year; the …

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THE DOWNTOWN CRIME PROBLEM REDUX?

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Is crime again becoming a crippling problem for our nation’s downtowns?

For decades after WW II, crime and the fear of crime first fostered downtown decline and then impeded their revitalization. Happily, since the early 1990s, the crime problem seemed to be abating as violent crime statistics nationally dropped steadily and significantly. This drop in crime was accompanied by reduced fear, increased pedestrian traffic and nighttime activities in downtowns revitalized by:

BEING A DOWNTOWN CHANGE AGENT: Facilitating Change for Downtown Business Operators

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Small Business Operators Are Slow To Adopt Changes

At conferences and other events where downtown managers congregate, the conversation at some time usually turns into a group therapy session focusing on the seemingly intractable, but certainly dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors of downtown business operators and landlords. Some of the dysfunctional behaviors raised might include deteriorating facades and signs, poor market research, lousy merchandising, “wrong” business hours, inadequate customer service, high rents, poor building conditions, harmful …

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BEING A DOWNTOWN CHANGE AGENT: Consensus, Conflict and Crisis

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This is the first in a series of postings on being a downtown change agent. It is not a nuts and bolts piece, but rather philosophical in tone. It is, however, a view that has been honed by over 30 years of “working in the trenches.”

A Process of Perpetual Positive Change

One need not be Noah Webster to understand that the term downtown revitalization implicitly means bringing a commercial district from an existing …

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Strong Downtown Entertainment Niches

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Increasingly, downtown and Main Street commercial districts are finding strength through the establishment or expansion of an entertainment niche. This is happening in communities of all sizes. The theater district around Times Square in Manhattan has long been world famous. At the other end of the scale are communities as small as Weston, VT, with a population of 630, that is home to The Weston Playhouse Theatre Company, the oldest professional theater …

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