Reviving downtown

Anyone who has been around awhile knows downtown Cape Girardeau is a far different place than just a decade ago. The Marquette Towers renovation, opening of the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge, the floodwall murals being painted, the new federal courthouse under construction on Independence Street and the highly anticipated turning of earth for the Southeast Missouri State University River Campus have put the building blocks in place for a downtown renaissance.

Other projects, including a $4 million plan to build luxury townhouses overlooking the Mississippi River, are just starting.

But a Southeast Missourian editorial said much the same thing in 1991. Merchants were looking at plans to build a open-air pavilion in the parking lot at the corner of Independence and Main streets, and empty storefronts had started filling up. Old-fashioned street lamps and benches had been added, and trees and flowers had been planted. Downtown Cape was being revitalized, the editorial said.

But some of those storefronts emptied again, and the sustained boom everyone hoped for did not happen.

We think the editorial was just prescient. Construction of the river walk, the painting of the murals on the floodwall and the magnificence of the Emerson Bridge have reconnected Cape Girardeans with their river heritage in a much more tangible way. Whether shopping, club-hopping, eating out or just watching the river run, people have more reasons to return downtown.

Importantly, more citizens live downtown now than any time in the past half century. Builders are now interested in developing downtown housing stock. Obviously, the more people who live downtown the better for business.

One reason Cape Girardeau's downtown did not wither away is that there were merchants -- Marty and Tootie Hecht, the Hutson family, jewelers Kent Zickfield, Roger Lang and C.P. McGinty and restaurateurs/property developers John and Jerianne Wyman among them -- who refused to go west toward Interstate 55 like so many others when business flagged.

This is not to say downtown's problems have evaporated. Many struggles remain in the neighborhoods filled with distinctive storefronts and historic houses. These problems demand attention if the momentum of a revitalization effort is going to continue.