August and September’s weather has been wonderful this year. My wife Wanda and I have just returned from Coldwater Michigan where my brother held his annual Wisconsin Style Fish Boil. For our daily exercise, we walked through Coldwater’s downtown and enjoyed the nice mix of shops and restaurants. For a city with 11,000 citizens, Coldwater has a vibrant walk-able downtown.

Annual celebrations are an opportunity for families and neighbors to get together and catch up on what is happening in their lives. In downtown Blue Springs, our annual celebration is the Fall Fun Festival, which is coming this weekend, from September 12th through the 14^th.

Visiting Coldwater and comparing their downtown with ours brought to mind how our city is progressing with our downtown’s revitalization. Following the council’s passage of our new downtown plan, several residential developments began to appear. Recently The Examiner decided to relocate their local office to Main Street to participate in the excitement. It is important to keep moving forward and encourage additional progress!

Our study showed that for the plan to be successful the City would need to make a visible commitment to the downtown to encourage business owners to locate their business in our downtown district. Two special items are built into the plan to accomplish just that. First, the city needs to build an entrance feature at Main and Seven Highway to direct people to our downtown. Second our city hall, which is bursting at the seams, needs to be relocated to a new location to allow for the formation of a city square with City Hall as its center. This brings important traffic into our downtown to energize existing and new businesses.

This week, as you attend the Fall Fun Festival, I encourage you face south as you stand in line for your traditional annual Timothy Lutheran Burger. Imagine City Hall standing in the center of the block between Walnut & Main and 10^th & 11^th streets. Picture a square of businesses surrounding that block forming a traditional energetic downtown. That is what the city’s plan calls for. It is an exciting and necessary component for the revitalization of our downtown.

As citizens, we need to encourage our elected officials to follow through on this vision and insist that they take action to complete this important plan. That action would create jobs, energize our economy, and produce a vibrant walk-able downtown at a time when other cities are struggling.

The City Council will hold a public hearing for the budget at the September 15 Council Meeting in the Howard Brown Public Safety building at 6:30pm. I hope you will be able to attend and I look forward to seeing you there!

Photo of Downtown Coldwater compliments of Adam Caselman.