Word: downtown
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years here she has caught but one glimpse of the place. It happened, she tells the group, in 1992, when Columbia Pictures came to town to shoot old-time street scenes for the movie version of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers. The film crew closed off downtown and spruced up the old buildings, turning the place into a roseate vision of itself--and attracting hundreds of Wilmingtonians to Main Street. "People were mingling, striking up conversations and laughing," says Hawley, "and suddenly they could remember what this town had been like, and see what it could be again...
...conveyors and catwalks bathed in a yellow fluorescent glow. "If we had known how big Airborne was going to get," says Wilmington Mayor Nick Eveland, "we might not have been so welcoming." As Airborne grew, so did Rombach Avenue, the commercial strip that links the overnight-mail complex to downtown. Rombach became "Hamburger Alley," a neon riot of fast-food outlets and discount retailers like Wal-Mart. Eveland, who has held the part-time mayoral post since 1984, now says he wishes Wilmington had imposed design standards on Hamburger Alley to limit the blight, but at the time he feared...
...always grateful for fresh perspectives. Teaming up with a preservationist group led by two other outsiders--John Baskin, 56, a ruminative writer from South Carolina, and former Bostonian Hawley, whose Orange Frazer Press specializes in books about Ohio--Chamberlain became involved in a crusade to create a downtown shopping-and-entertainment zone. Mayor Eveland and the city council liked the idea, but never came up with a way to finance it. The activists also tried to persuade Eveland to join an innovative small-town renewal program called the National Main Street Center (see box), battled his plan to raze...
...enthralled about ripping down old buildings," says Eveland, "but some have outlived their useful lives. What comes to mind when you think of Wilmington is the downtown--so maintaining it is terribly important." Eveland is negotiating with a developer who wants to build a downtown retail complex, but most of the commercial action has moved to Hamburger Alley, where prime acreage is controlled by a city councilman named Robert Raizk. Downtown's economy has been so precarious that local bankers wouldn't risk the money to turn a warehouse into Main Street's first upscale restaurant; a businessman in town...
...Didn't Die: After fires in 1991 and 1992 wiped out five landmarks in the 19th century downtown, Randolph wasn't sure whether to bother rebuilding. But people rallied, flocking to town meetings and raising cash to reconstruct in the period style. The newcomer-fueled housing market is the strongest in a decade...