Silver City is just as cool as everyone says it is. Which is to say that it's less, uh, intense than Las Vegas, NM, way more happening than Truth or Consequences, much more neighborly than Albuquerque and a smidge shy of trusty ol' Santa Fe. But, man, it's a bitch if you're trying to find a place to eat dinner on Easter. Still, Santa Fe could learn something from a long gander at Silver City's downtown and the occasional lime green building, Mondrian-smattered storefront or other historical aberration that smacks more of local funk than rigid fixation on a mythical point of make-believe history.
The "Downtown Vision Plan" meeting that took place a couple weeks ago at Warehouse 21, the one oriented toward generating input from the broad swath of needs and opinions possible to choke from the mouths of 18-to-35-year-olds (as though perspective changes little during the span of those years), was a wee blip on the
radar of last week's column, but now, days later, I can't pry it from my mind; couldn't do it with a grapefruit spoon and a hammer. During that meeting I'd asked in general, less as an objective journalist and more as a
crotchety columnist with a personal agenda, how much consideration had been given to closing the Plaza to car traffic. No one had really responded to the question at the time; rather it dutifully went up on the dry erase board as an "idea." Later though, City Councilor Karen Heldmeyer circulated the room in what I saw as an engaged and respectable attempt to answer many questions that people had which she had noticed weren't really answered. It was a cool thing to do, but it also sort of signed, sealed and delivered the fact that the meeting had come across less as a "visioning" session and more as a "here's why we can't do that" session.
Heldmeyer told me, and I paraphrase, that every time we talk about closing the Plaza to cars, people object-often native Santa Feans and long-time locals object-because they say that driving past the Plaza is the only connection they still have with it. Plus, she added, it makes it difficult to take granny downtown if you can't drive right up to it.
I'm sensitive to that, I really am. Or, I'm sensitive to the idea that I'm not the only member of this community with an idea about how our downtown and Plaza landscape should look and be interacted with, and that those multiple ideas ain't always gonna jive. But this, as I've been festering and blustering about for weeks now, is the problem that develops when you ask the public what they think-they complain. The case is literally this: Our future is being determined not by a great civic leader or an energetic cabal of frisky bureaucrats, but by the group of people that is angrier and more fussy than any other group of people. Who exactly these people are changes from issue to issue, but it usually involves a phone tree and some neighborly blackmail along the lines of "if you don't show up with the rest of us to oppose (fill in the blank) we'll oppose your remodel permit."
Moreover, this cantankerous public was never asked about the things that they should have gotten really pissy about. Anybody who loves the Plaza enough to make a stink about changing the way it operates, especially if they've lived here for a long, long time, should have stood up and objected at the "Hey everyone, let's turn the heart of the city over to chain stores and anyone else who can pay $30,000 a month in rent" meeting. Oh, they didn't have a meeting before that plan went through? What about a reach-around, did they have that? A kiss?
What this public, whose "input" is in such high demand at planning meetings, strategizing sessions and vision development, really needs is for its bluff to be called. It doesn't take a genius to know what a beautiful, (quasi) historic downtown needs. The information is out there. The world over, a plaza with no cars is a plaza full of people, locals and grannies included. Check with the experts and then do it regardless of what the public thinks they're mad about. In the end, the public will love it and pretend they were all in favor of it. The Plaza and a couple of arterial streets should have been closed to all traffic (except a small amount of commercial deliveries) a long time ago, before Galisteo Street's beautiful cobblestones were replaced with 100 percent character-free chip seal. Like Nike used to say, Just Do It. When people complain, thank them for their opinion and then, Just Do It.
But I don't get fired up enough to strip the citizenry of their right to input by hanging out in Silver City. No, it was the cliff dwellings at Gila National Monument that did me in. Some enterprising Mogollon brave was prowling the wilderness for tasty bunnies and found a gorgeous place to live. Really...as cliff dwellings go, Gila rocks all over Bandelier or Puye or Tsankawi. It's beautiful, in both location and construction, and the small band of people who made it their home had everything they could ever need right in the midst of an idyllic setting. But, as is always the case with these things, the Mogollon people who inhabited Gila abandoned the dwellings without explanation. Some have hypothesized disease or war or the loss of a key resource. Me though, I'm pretty sure it was too many public input meetings.
