Developers have initiated nearly 500 homes since January within 2 miles of City Hall. Those include luxury apartments and riverfront townhouses, period-look houses in Springfield and new apartments in Five Points. Other projects are in the making. The activity is a welcome spark for a downtown redevelopment, which has been seeking a jump start for decades. The Adam's Mark hotel emerging along the river will enhance the convention prospects, but attractive housing remains the elixir needed to energize downtown after the office buildings empty each day.
Services follow people.
But the people who live in the downtown area and nearby neighborhoods have dwindled to about 8,300, or about 1,000 from a decade ago. Except for scattered exceptions, much of the housing stock is in decay. But the recent developments are encouraging. If people who work downtown live downtown, traffic and pollution are lessened. With the right bounces, believing in downtown might not be so crazy after all.