Give Downtown Front Royal a Place to Sit

A proposal by Town staff to close a portion of Church Street at its intersection with Main Street was later rejected by Council. I’ve never been in favor of turning Main Street into a pedestrian mall. But I am in favor of giving people a reason to stop, sit, and enjoy it.

Once the scaffolding comes down, that particular stretch of Church Street presents an interesting opportunity. The sidewalks are a little too narrow for benches, yet the street itself has already been closed for quite some time—and, as far as I can tell, the sky has not fallen, and there’s been no apparent collapse of civilization.

Most importantly, we aren’t losing parking spaces because, well, there aren’t any there to lose.

This particular spot is surrounded by businesses, restaurants, and storefronts. What it doesn’t have, at least that I’ve noticed, is much of a place for people to stop and rest. And handicapped parking? There may be some nearby, but I haven’t conducted an official handicapped-parking census lately. I do have other hobbies.

So why not imagine something a little different?

Put in a few benches. Add a tree. Throw in some flower planters. Maybe a little landscaping. Suddenly, instead of being a piece of pavement people hurry through, it becomes a little gathering place. A place to sit. A place to rest. A place to people-watch. And, if we’re lucky, a place where somebody’s husband can sit down while his wife says, “I’m just going to run into this one store for a minute.” We all know that “one minute” is a lie.

And before someone asks, “But which business benefits from that?” The answer should be: all of us.

Every day, people walking along Main Street stop and sit on the bench outside our shop. It’s convenient. They rest their feet, chat, people-watch, and sometimes wander into the store afterward. Yes, technically, they could cross the street and sit somewhere else.

But if we keep moving people along every time they want to sit down, we might as well put up a sign: Please keep walking. Nothing to see here.

Downtowns should be about creating places where people want to linger. Stopping and sitting are not bad things. In fact, it may be one of the best things we can encourage people to do downtown.

We don’t need to build a grand pedestrian plaza or reinvent Main Street. We could simply take a small piece of underused pavement and turn it into a small, attractive gathering place. Because sometimes the best way to get people to spend a little time…and perhaps a little money…in downtown Front Royal is to give them somewhere to put their feet.

Let’s create a place where people can stop and sit. After all, if we make downtown too easy to walk through without stopping, the goal we may accomplish is that everyone gets home with tired feet and their wallets completely intact.

And I’m pretty sure that’s not the economic-development strategy anyone had in mind.

Sue Laurence
Front Royal, VA

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