it's enough to make your head spin...

I began giving walking tours of Downtown in 1998, nearly 10 years ago, and my how things have changed. Back then Title Guarantee & Trust on the corner of 5th and Hill was still home to La Opinion, Metro 417 was only known as the Subway Terminal Building and sat unoccupied, the old Broadway Department Store on 4th between Broadway and Hill sat empty and in major disrepair, the Pan American Lofts building was simply known as the Giant Penny building, the Victor Clothing Company still sold clothes and 4th and Main was a sleepy corner being eyed by Tom Gilmore.

Today all of those buildings and many more in between have been converted for alternate use. Most of them converted (or in the process of being converted) to residential which has infused a large amount of diversity into the street scene both day and night. Just go Downtown on any given Saturday or Sunday and it’s a veritable melting pot.

Along with the residential core, an influx of bars, restaurants and a host of other business services have come to the area. Keeping up with the change that occurs on what seems to be a daily basis is impossible….or nearly impossible. Thanks to the Downtown News, on a quarterly basis we, the readers, get to bypass all the dirty work and read about the current happenings in the way of Residential Sales, Rentals, Mixed Use Projects, Bars/Restaurants, Schools, Civic and Community Projects. For those who just like to look at pretty pictures instead, there's a great map produced by Cartifact which shows all the projects in said Downtown News Development issue.

The amount of projects being tracked has increased on a yearly basis with the current issue topping out at just over 170 projects. Damn! I remember when I could sit down and read the update in like under a half hour. Now I need a good 2 hours and flow charts galore just to keep track of which projects each developer is doing.

Back in 2000 I used to tell my tour-goers, "come back in 2005 and you will see a drastically different Downtown than you see today." Today I tell them the same thing however I use 2010 as a reference marker.

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Comments

[lofts for rent]

I have been very excited to see the resurgence of downtown over the past few years. WIth teh recent downturn in the economy the overprices units for sale have now become loft apartments for lease. Hopefully we will see more creative individuals in the center of the city once again.