When I was little, downtown Seattle was the only real “downtown” I knew.

Sure, neighboring cities and suburbs had great shopping corridors. But downtown Seattle was the obvious option if you wanted to walk elbow to elbow with strangers, put a dollar in a street musician’s cap or people watch.

Now, it seems that all of Seattle’s suburbs and surrounding areas are racing to revitalize or create downtowns of their own. It’s a natural progression of development for some areas and, for others, a return to an abandoned Main Street.

In many Puget Sound cities, there is a calculated effort to create a corridor that mimics a town square more than a mall. Upzones, developer incentives and property tax forgiveness programs taken on by cities like Federal Way are aimed at seducing people into moving in near shops and transit.

Some of these plans make me think of Sim City. Not the one where you scan the terra cotta landscape before you plunk down your power station. This is the Sim City where you take an existing city and need to rearrange the squares to stimulate the economy or cut pollution or get Godzilla to leave town.

Is there a magic formula for germinating a vibrant downtown? It seems like priority one around here is getting those residences built. If cities up-zone the blocks next to existing transit corridors and shops, and provide developer incentives to build, will the rest just fall into place?

A training next month in Wenatchee, the self-named apple capitol of the world, will focus on downtown revitalization. It’s sponsored by CTED and the Washington State Main Street Program. Sessions include topics like “the case for art,” “seven components of a healthy downtown,” and “are we too small to revitalize our downtown?” Godzilla isn’t mentioned by name, but there is a session called “when Hollywood comes to town.”

There will also be a tour of converted buildings in Wenatchee’s warehouse district and an awards banquet honoring the state’s best downtown revitalization projects.

This entry was posted by Shawna Gamache on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.