The last thing downtown Streator needs — especially as the city's new Walmart gains momentum — is an image problem.
Yet that's exactly what city leaders are dealing with as they struggle to resolve two pressing issues: parking and residential spaces, both of which must be addressed if the district has any chance to survive as a retail incubator.
On the parking issue, Councilman Willy Williamson put it best at a committee-of-the-whole session last week when he said, "This has been an ongoing complaint for 50 years. When the city had parking meters in the '70s, the argument was to get rid of the meters. I don't see how you're going to make an ordinance that's enforceable."
In this way, Streator is like many towns of its size. The downtown shopping district is not, and never will be again, what it was decades ago, yet there are plenty of folks in town who remember fondly the days of yore and think a revitalization is just around the corner. And while certain retail operations can be very successful in such locations — which should be encouraged — it's difficult to imagine a return to a time when every storefront is occupied by a booming business that can put a dollar value on each nearby parking space.
I was a city government reporter in Clinton, Iowa, for about four years, and downtown parking was a hot potato the entire time. For every retail business who dearly wanted free parking for customers, there seemed to be another professional business (say a lawyer or accountant) who had no problem leaving his car outside the front door from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Then there was the call center that scheduled regular employee breaks so everyone could dart outside to trade parking places and skirt the two-hour limits.
Heck, the Clinton City Council once passed a much-debated parking ordinance and, within a month, was arguing with itself and its residents over what rules actually were enacted. I'm not saying Streator's elected officials could be that dumb, only issuing a cautionary tale that parking rules must be as simple and enforceable as possible.
The same is true of the issue of residential space downtown. As Times staffer Derek Barichello reported last week, the city apparently has been lax in enforcing a 2004 ordinance regarding special use permits for people living in the Central Business District. Now that there are complaints about people living in first-floor storefronts — there's that image problem — the ordinance is being called into question.
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