Our downtown core is many things.

A gathering place for social interaction, a venue for

cultural presentation and exchange, a conduit for

transit and travel to and from the larger world around it.

First and foremost, our downtown is defined by commerce – hundreds of islanders earning their livelihoods, and

thousands more spending a good part of theirs – a fact of which some folks seem to keep losing sight.

Our thoughts are occasioned by the debate at last week’s council meeting over $75,000 in public funds for a downtown planning effort. Local business leaders – including Larry Nakata of Town & Country, and Dr. Tom Haggar of Winslow Clinic – have committed their own money to devise “business friendly” treatments that would guide future, long-range improvements; they asked the city to pony up a like amount to complete and codify the effort.

The emergence of key business and property owners as players (rather than kibitzers) in downtown planning is long overdue, yet they have been greeted with a persistent subtext of suspicion. When the downtown initiative surfaced in July, it was derided as coming from a “private interest group”; last week’s discussion found the council divided over competing resolutions as to the city’s intent, with some asking whether the city would be committing itself wholesale to downtown whims without greater public participation.

First, let us say that if Town & Country is considered a special interest, then our community discourse has gone well askew. The viability of our downtown core hinges directly on that market’s success – indeed, on its long-term presence on Winslow Way, which is not guaranteed. When the T&C ownership decides to get in the game, the other players need to pay attention.

We can think of three good reasons to embrace the planning effort as it has been presented.

One is political. When the long-discussed reconstruction of central Winslow Way finally gets under going (the current estimate is 2006), the wailing and gnashing of teeth will reach biblical proportions. And the loudest cries will come from downtown merchants aggrieved by losses at the till, as shoppers dodge the inconvenience for stores elsewhere. So what better way to get buy-in from merchants up front than through a plan they help devise, obviating complaints that the project is being foisted on them by the city.

The second pertains to fairness: It’s their land and their

businesses, so why shouldn’t they have an early and significant say in the planning? We all take a proprietary view of downtown, but let’s remember who has the most directly at stake.

Finally, there’s the pragmatic. As an architect we know has observed, the planning cycle is far longer than the political cycle; what one council anoints as The Future, a subsequent council invariably will nitpick with impunity before a single spade is turned. So for sitting council members to believe they are determining the future of Winslow Way by what they do or do not “commit to” today falls somewhere between naivete and hubris.

Rather than treating the downtown business planning effort with suspicion, all parties – elected officials, arts and cultural representatives, community groups, what have you – should welcome it and set a place at the table.

Maybe they should sit down and have lunch together. We can suggest any one of a number of fine downtown eateries, including the T&C deli.