I just wanted to share that the car show Saturday seemed to be a success, for the most part. Lots of folks walking around. But of course in only the style that my old hometown could muster up, the two places I told people to check out were closed during the event. Does that make any sense? Murphy's Landing and the Canal Pub both were closed. I believe ML was going to open at 4, the event started at 1pm. Luckily West Central Wine was open.

As someone who does not live in the city any more we do visit downtown fairly frequently. While it obviously is still lacking many, many components for a successful rebirth (like jobs!) I enjoy going to Lester's, Wine place, Murphy's, both pizza joints, the art places, soap store, etc. Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the roses and appreciate that there has been an improvement in the last 10-15 years, otherwise we would not be returning as much as we do. I went over a decade not stopping anywhere in Middletown other than my parents house then got the hell back out. That has changed. We now regularly go downtown, hit the B Dubs on the east side, Burlington/Gabes etc.

Business is not booming but at least it is not completely out! We live 20 minutes from all of the hot spots but we are choosing the old homestead from time to time. I have already grown tired of the Liberty Center, it's trying to be too many things at once and not blowing me away with any facet. Yeah we go there but I am somewhat disappointed, Easton is still 10X better IMO - they missed their mark if that was their bar. We shall see what the future holds for Middletown. I have worked in downtown Hamilton for nearly 20 years and they are far, far ahead in bringing people back. But that has only blossomed in the last few years as they brought in employers and apartments and unique shops, businesses and eats. However there are other areas of Hamilton that are just terrible and full of blight. I wonder if all of this focus on the downtowns is the best overall prescription for the success of the cities as a whole.

The biggest issue with comparing Hamilton to Middletown is that downtown Hamilton has 10X the daily vehicle traffic of Middletown's downtown areas (even the major arteries).  The point is people are already going through downtown Hamilton - where they aren't in Middletown.  (50k/day vs. 5k/day and much of the 5k of Middletown's is non-commerce driven (i.e. educational and/or governmental))

No one can dispute there's been some improvement - but one certainly can dispute the ROI (which has to be at least 40M in the negative according to my calculations) in the last 30 years.  I'm all for private development and private funding.....and I'm glad the car show was a success.  Although, at 5pm there was a show at a church out by the interstate that had more cars than the downtown show. :-(

In any case - all the money that has been spent will never be recovered - and there's a statistically significant part of the population that will not go downtown for pretty much any reason....making it all that much less likely to ever get a true turnaround.