Monday, February 13, 2006

Save the District!

What a waste….

According to the Pueblo Chieftain the Union historic district is having serious problems with maintaining buildings. This is not only appearance sake, but probably structural integrity as well.

They had a good picture of the BIG building across from City Hall, as an example of how some of the buiildings are detrioriating.

I have a question for the City Fathers. If the Puelbo Police Department is cramped for room, why don’t we get THAT building for them.

The key questions would be:

[1] How much room does Pueblo Police Department need?
[2] How much room is in that big old building?
[3] How much would it cost to fit the building to the police department need?
[4] Is the total cost less than the $11M that the police department said it needed for a new building?

Meanwhile, at the other end of Union, there’s the old Holmes Hardware store that is vacant.

It looks like the perfect site for a good anchor store.

Personally, I think we need another good book store in the city. Someone to compete with Barnes and Noble up in Big Box Land. Something to attract people to the area. We’ve already got pubs and restaurants and ice cream parlors in the area. We’ve already got Kohl’s and JC Penny and other department stores in town. They compete with each other fairly well.  What we need is more stores with good things to buy that can’t be found elsewhere in town; except for one place. For books, it’s Barnes and Noble. For DVDs and music, it’s Circuit City. We need some more competition and in different locations. Downtown’s Union district would be a great place to be.

What has PEDCo been doing to promote getting a high-profile/high-quality retailer into Union district? Nothing?

I eagarly await hearing the answers to these questions.