I’ve been reading several articles in The Daily World concerning the Gateway Center. They motivated me to dig deeper and research what it was all about.

I recently read the “Three year Action Plan” for resuscitating downtown Aberdeen on the website downtownaberdeen.com. The City of Aberdeen and the Aberdeen Revitalization Movement has a list of goals and priorities, in this order: 1) Reconnect the City to the riverfront. 2) Create a bold and impressive entrance to downtown. 3) Moderate the traffic impact on downtown.

It provoked a lot of questions for me: Does a shiny new modern-looking building represent Aberdeen? I thought Aberdeen was about its history, especially in the timber industry. No matter the design, wouldn’t the new building seem like the old bait and switch? You know, get tourists to park, go in to the pretty Gateway Center for an overpriced snack and a few trinkets and then what? Walk downtown to shop and have a restaurant meal? Nope, it’s still ugly and scary with its vacant, dirty and dilapidated buildings.

The plan’s number one priority is to “purchase and redevelop property adjacent to the river near downtown, providing access to a world class park, public market, retail and new housing.” The operative word there is near. So while the businesses downtown continue to struggle, the city wants to put money into new property and retail businesses that will draw people to the riverfront, not downtown. Tourists won’t walk from the riverfront to spend money downtown because, as it states in priority number 3: “Downtown Aberdeen is dominated by high volume … fast moving traffic … it is unsafe, unattractive and prevents the downtown from attracting retail shops, office tenants or people …”

So one is left to assume that the city thinks that the riverfront can bring in more money than a revitalized shopping core with dozens of shops? I’m not claiming to be an expert. I don’t live in Aberdeen. However, I, my friends and relatives, (local and out-of-state) do, on occasion, drive through Aberdeen as tourists.

I get it. Breathing life into the city will take time (apparently three years) and be expensive. And it’s probably not an easy task to get government help. Count your good fortune that Grays Harbor County gave the money they did. Please don’t also expect them to take over the Gateway Center when they have many other buildings they must take care of already. It’s not free.

It seems logical to me that if you want to revitalize downtown Aberdeen you want those goals and priorities to be Three, One, Two. Save downtown first, and you save Aberdeen.

Barbara Cox

Montesano