In Our View: Walkable, shop-able, sustainable?

The Daily Independent, Ashland, Ky.
·2 min read

Marty Gute’s love of America’s pastime is well documented, but his fellow city commissioners, the mayor and city manager must also love baseball or are perhaps at least fans of one movie about the diamond.

In the 1989 hit film “Field of Dreams,” Ray Kinsella, played by Kevin Costner, kept hearing the iconic line “If you build it, they will come.”

It’s a mantra Ashland seems to be betting on with downtown renovations; most notably with the installation of five roundabouts on Winchester Avenue.

In the movie, Kinsella builds a baseball field in a cornfield but doesn’t have anyone to play on said field.

The city is building a walkable and shop-able downtown but are customers interested in a walkable or shop-able downtown?

However, the quote from the movie is not what modern society has made it.

In the movie, it is not plural.

The line is “If you build it, HE will come.”

And as we look around the region, we wonder if the city has mistaken singular for plural when planning for downtown.

We do believe the roundabouts will make the area more walkable and shop-able, and we love walkable and shop-able areas, but does Ashland in general?

Will the region support boutiques and artisan shops? We have our doubts. Maybe temporarily, but will the region support these types of shops year-round?

Several area craftspeople we’ve spoken to have told us a huge majority of their sales is online.

If residents don’t support local businesses run out of area homes, what makes a shopfront seem remotely feasible?

Part of it is the simple fact this is an economically depressed area that doesn’t have the funds to buy local or artisan. The big box store on the hill or the yellow-signed stores in every neighborhood offer a cheap — most likely foreign made — version of the item. and when money is tight like it is for so many citizens of the region, decisions must be made on cost. With many residents on a fixed income and inflation eating into funds, compromises have to be made.

So, will downtown Ashland be more walkable after the completion of the roundabouts? Certainly. More shop-able? Absolutely. Better looking? Potentially debatable, but we’d argue yes.

But are those things sustainable? Hopefully, but questionable.

At this point, the roundabouts are not only coming, they are almost complete. We just hope the shops get our support as a region — with a plural and not a singular response.

We’ll be there, and we hope all y’all will join us.