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Updated 11:31pm - Mar 18, 2010
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Opinion Editor's Note: Where the harbor and downtown are one and the same
Editor's Note: Where the harbor and downtown are one and the same
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I’ve often thought that Crescent City faces an extra challenge when it comes to shopping and tourism because of the lay of its land. That’s because we’re spread out with four focal points — downtown, the Highway 101/Northcrest Drive corridors, Washington Boulevard and the harbor. No matter what kind of successful tourism promotion and economic growth we might imagine in our future, it’s going to be hard for all four of those areas to thrive in a retail sense. The real challenges are to make downtown and our harbor buzz. After all, the highway corridors already have the traffic, and Washington Boulevard has Wal-Mart, so they’ll get their share of attention. Downtown and the harbor in essence will have to share the tourists and shoppers lured off the highway, which is one reason why the completion of a pedestrian bridge over Elk Creek as part of a walkway between the two areas was important. But they’ll always be two distinct areas. I recently spent a weekend two hours up the road in Bandon, which is at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to coastal town geography. Its downtown and its harbor are one — so much so that the town was originally built atop a portion of the Coquille River near its mouth. Thus its quaint little “Old Town” shopping and restaurant district merges seamlessly with a long boardwalk that invites waterside strolls.
While Laura was occupied as the featured artist at Second Street
Gallery for a couple of days, I got to explore the area. Its
storefronts are mostly full and the sidewalk traffic relatively steady.
It smacked of visitor-friendliness — the boardwalk area even had a
kiosk where visitors could borrow life vests for kids to walk the
docks, as well as a glass-enclosed, impressively furnished shelter
where you can sit down and get out of the wind while still seeing the
sights.
Did I forget to mention that wind? I’ve never been in Bandon’s Old Town when it wasn’t blowing. That’s one price you pay for merging your downtown with your harbor. Car travel is required to check out the greater Bandon area. In fact, it’s a surprisingly lengthy drive up the highway and through Bullards Beach State Park to physically reach the lighthouse that sits just across the river from Old Town. It’s an even longer drive to the attraction that the area is becoming famous for in golf circles: the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, 54 holes of duffer heaven, many of them beside the ocean, with 18 more holes on the way. With all its upscale amenities, shuttle vans and staff people armed with walkie-talkies, this is the kind of golf atmosphere that makes me nervous. I’m a lifelong hack on the links. When I hit the ball straight, it’s because I achieved a balance between a slice and a hook. This is best done in much less fancy environs. Fortunately, my mission was not to tee off (if you have to ask how much the greens fees are, they’re too much) but to procure some post cards from the gift shop. Great beaches to the north and south, a centralized retail district/harbor and now, world-class golf courses. You might conclude that Bandon has an unfair assortment of riches. But become a regular for a couple of days, like I did, and you’ll hear some grousing. For instance, merchants will tell you that an awful lot of those upscale golfers fly in to North Bend, shuttle to and from the golf resort and never set foot in Bandon proper. And while Old Town buzzes in the daylight, it rolls up its sidewalks at dusk, even on a Saturday. We’re talking still life, not nightlife. Every remote coastal town has its challenges when it comes to economic survival. We could do worse than to make our stand down here amid the redwoods. |
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