Street View
By Chris Murphy
Let’s take a walk! Yes, a real walk where we look around, grab our friends, a camera and a spare couple of hours and head downtown. We are on the brink of a new downtown. Have you heard this before? Well this time it is happening and you can see the work in progress. There are new owners of buildings downtown. There is a Rockabilly Barber on 10th, new coffee shops opening on J and a new restaurant opening at 10th and J.
There are new incentives for façade renovation and new business creation. The permits have been streamlined and city manager, Jim Holgersson has made it his mission to make doing business in Modesto easy. There is new teamwork with the Modesto Improvement Partnership that will be working cross function with operations, promotions and urban design to facilitate new planning for 10th St, 11th St and J Street. You can read the interview in this issue with Cindy Birdsill as this efforts gets up to full speed.
Modesto needs to be more walkable, more welcoming, and promote the feelings of safety and community. If you have not been to downtown Modesto lately, you need to check it out. This is the classic chicken and the egg, we need more people downtown to get to the next level with housing and new businesses, but the downtown we have already is worth a visit. You will meet new friends at Commonwealth, enjoy all-ages music at the Barking Dog and you can walk everywhere. We will have snow in downtown for Rockin’ Holiday and we will even have ice skating with Modesto On Ice. You are never more than 4 blocks from anything when you park centrally
Make it an evening, make it a day, get your camera and check out the architecture and more importantly, make notes about what you want. Are you a young professional in town working for Gallo? What do you want? Are you a young family with kids? What do you want? Have you lived here for 30 years and want to enjoy things to do? What do you want? Please be a part the process and dive in and make a difference.
ModestoView is part of this process and is part of the Improvement partnership and we are working to make Modesto better. Please tell us what we need to do better. Email me at chrism@modestoview.com
