Breathing Life into Two-Five Drive

By Curmudgeon

The Standard-Examiner this morning reports that all of the Union Square condos have been sold. This is good news for downtown, and for Ogden. Of course, it took subsidies from the city to buyers to fund down payments, but it is good, finally, that the condos will be occupied.

Less good news for the clock tower commercial building, recently completed on the same block, and still nearly completely empty. The ground floor large unit would be a perfect site for an independent bookstore, which might also add some life to the street after dark. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I, when we dine downtown of a warmish evening, notice that the street is... well... dead. People drive in, eat, walk to their cars, drive out.

Living downtowns we've seen, and enjoyed, in other places have living streets after dark. People after eating wander the shops, poke around bookstores, walk off a calorie or two, stop for a desert. None of that now happens in downtown Ogden. An indie bookstore along the lines of The King's English in SLC could provide a big boost to the street life of downdown.

Not likely to happen though since the Junction developer is after a big box marketer some years down the road like Barnes and Noble [reknowned in my experience for hiring sales persons who don't actually read books].

So long as downtown remains a drive in, drive out location only, it's not going to take off. Advocates of the gondola/gondola scheme like to compare 25th to Park City's main drag. Well, the latter is alive with people nearly all the time, even when the sun goes down. 25th Street is not, and I don't see much changing by means of the Junction.

Perhaps I'm wrong about that. I hope I am. But we shall see.

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Ed Note: This excellent Curmudgeon post has been unabashedly snatched from one of our comments threads and promoted to the front page, because it makes a couple of good observations and asks a very fundamental question about our downtown Ogden. Other readers have also commented here in the past about the recently moribund "after dark" atmosphere of Historic 25th Street. Is our "drive-in, drive out" car culture a primary culprit here?

What say our gentle readers? What is needed on and around 25th Street to change it into a more vibrant neighborhood? Will the permanent occupancy of the Union Square Condos and other planned downtown residences transform the area into a "living downtown," similar to other cities that Curmudgeon descibes? Or will our new downtown residents simply "hole up" in their new "digs" after sunset, the same way they did when living in the "burbs?"

What's it going to take to breathe some life into Two-Five Drive?