Build it and they will come?
To the editor:
The perennial question of what to do with Presque Isle’s downtown arises again, again, and again. A thoroughfare made for the horse and buggy, and the olde time owner-in-the-store businesses was never designed for the behemoths, and present day shoppers’ mindsets traversing it now. It is a marvel at how the drivers of those long, huge transport trucks can make right angle turns without taking corners off buildings, or, at least lamp and sign posts with them.
What is the rationale behind no left turns at State and Main when there is a traffic light to direct drivers? Farther north there is more space for vehicular traffic, but making left turns out of parking lots requires the skills of a matador. This is especially true when drivers want to leave in either direction as they leave the Verizon parking area at the same time drivers are turning right on red at the Walmart driveway’s traffic light. Navigating Presque Isle’s Main St., at any point, makes one want to string up the guy who invented the funnel!
Will the proposal by the Eaton Peabody people to close off Riverside Drive really help downtown Presque Isle? If the proposal is adopted, what will be done with that land? Is that area to lie fallow, to become an eye sore, a repository for cast off junk? Will telling long established business owners on Main Street to move it resolve the question of how to attract more foot traffic to down town Presque Isle? Olde time discount houses will never again grace the downtowns of any town. Specialty stores in any downtown can make a go of it if they get their word out, if patrons can find adequate parking, and if drivers can readily, easily make either a left or right turn out of parking lots. Professional offices on Main St., by their very nature, do not attract the great numbers of people who want a shoppers’ paradise.
Trying to picture how the Eaton Peabody proposal will make more foot traffic come to downtown Presque Isle is very trying. As it looks now, the money spent to have the people within that company come up with suggestions for the betterment of downtown Presque Isle would have been better spent sweeping Main Street.
V. Dana Allison
Castle Hill
