
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 2, 1994                   TAG: 9406080006
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By RUSSELL W. JOHNSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`WALKING MALLS' BRING OUT SHOPPERS

IN THE May 22 edition of this newspaper, I read the Business section article ``Market mission,'' by staff writer Mag Poff, with interest, and would like to make a few comments on it.

Roanoke city is in the same bind, or boat, as many other cities in the nation - losing business in the inner city. Today, the only shopping done in the inner city is during lunch break. After the brisk business during lunch hours, streets are deserted and store owners could just as well close their doors and go home.

Many cities have tried improving their inner city, but have failed. The city where I was born and raised, Hackensack, N.J., is one of them. Years ago, Hackensack - county seat of Bergen County, with an influx of more than 100,000 people during the working day - was Bergen County's shopping hub. Shoppers from all around, even from New York City, went there to shop. This lasted for many years until, like here in Roanoke, shopping malls began springing up on the outskirts of the city or in nearby localities. The inner city saw a big decline in customers, and businesses began closing their doors.

Hackensack, like many other cities, tried to improve the central shopping area's image to coax shoppers back. Hackensack told store owners to spruce up their storefronts, and the city even helped by making the two main thoroughfares into ``one-way streets'' so traffic would flow along at a quicker pace. Also, the city spruced up intersections on its main street with brick crosswalks. But as it stands today, shopping malls still have the business, and Hackensack is no longer the shopping hub it used to be.

How did these cities fail? The answer is simple. They didn't put their thinking caps on straight, so they came up with the wrong answer. The right answer is ``a walking mall'' in the inner city.

In Europe, cities had the same problem. Not with supermarkets or shopping malls, because they really don't have any, but with just plain economic problems - gas was too sky-high to travel far, jobs were hard to come by, and shoppers just didn't have the money to spend. But many of the cities brought shoppers back by turning shopping areas into walking malls. Lincoln, England, and Hamburg, Germany, are great examples. They spruced up shopping areas so people would come out and window-shop, which brought out hard cash, and people began to spend.

This could be done in Roanoke in a grand way, but certain things will have to be done first. Do away with the eyesores on Campbell and Salem avenues. Either tear down old buildings, or have their owners make them presentable in the eyes of the public. Once this is done, then the area referred to as Market Square will become the shopping hub in the Roanoke Valley once again.

Russell W. Johnson of Vinton is a retired sergeant of police in New Jersey.

by CNB