Not that many years ago, the city had plans to repair downtown sidewalks. Somebody in city management decided that before the sidewalk repair work was to begin, the city needed to hire a Midwestern consulting firm to develop multiple options for a redesigned downtown. The proposed plans included a downtown pedestrian mall design that didn’t allow any car traffic, a couple of options that were strikingly similar to the current design options presented by the West Coast consulting firm the city hired recently, and the last option presented was to leave the design of downtown alone and just fix the sidewalks.
I attended the public meetings showing the different design options, putting my little round sticker on the option I liked best. The choice that garnered the most support? You guessed it – leave the design of downtown alone and fix the sidewalks. If you have a preconceived agenda to carry out, it’s certainly embarrassing and counterproductive to hire consultants and pay them tens of thousands of dollars only to find out the most supported option is to do the most logical and pragmatic thing – leave it alone. Who decided that that “leave it alone” wouldn't be a choice in the more recent surveys of available options for the future of downtown Durango?
Ken Temple
Durango
