Making the Champaign-Urbana area an even better place to call home
News-Gazette Editor Jeff D’Alessio’s recent question asking what would make the Champaign-Urbana area “an even better place to call home” elicited some interesting responses.
When I read the question and the responses the first week, I thought how good it would be to bring back the old Katsinas Restaurant & Tavern on the corner of Green and Neil streets in Champaign. It was a great place for many years to meet friends, have a drink or dinner and enjoy life.
Pike Place Market in Seattle
But it’s been gone for years now, and as Thomas Wolfe said about his character George Webber in his novel “You Can’t Go Home Again,” the passing of time prevents him from “ever being able to go home again.” Katsinas’ is gone and just a good memory now.
Thinking more about what would really make the area a better place, and create those good memories through the years, I thought of Pike Place Market, “a defining Seattle icon for more than a century,” according to its website, and wondered about creating a market like that here.
Considered “the soul of Seattle” by many, it was founded in 1907, has operated continuously since and is now operated by the Pike Place Preservation & Development Authority. Its website proudly points out the “9 historic acres in the center of downtown where everyday locals and tourists shop, visit and discover.”
Visiting friends in Seattle several years ago, Pike Place Market was one stop we were told we wouldn’t want to miss. The Space Needle was another. Both are iconic and unique to Seattle, and very much worth seeing. But seeing the market that had been around for more than 100 years and is “brought to life by the hundreds of farmers, crafters, small businesses and residents that call it ‘home’” was just as appealing to me as the modern technology and engineering skills that built the Space Needle.
Would a market place like that here make Champaign-Urbana a better place to live? Well, it would certainly add another great dimension to an already-great area. As the Pike Place website says, “While the market is grounded by its incredible collection of diverse businesses, activities and services, it simply would not exist without the passion and support from the citizens of Seattle.”
That passion and support sounds like a description of the citizens of Champaign-Urbana with any number of projects here. With Hotel Royer opening the historic Lincoln Hotel in Urbana soon (hopefully), with the adjacent connected mall, a farmer’s market right there, and Urbana Mayor Diane Marlin and her administration continuously working to add new businesses in the city, a bigger, permanent Pike Place-like market might attract people from a wider area to the community.
It would be a great place to visit for about anything you can imagine right in the middle of downtown Urbana. Of course, it would probably be smaller than Pike Place and not have the same traffic, but it would be a great addition to Urbana. The hotel, current mall and surrounding area in downtown Urbana would make it possible.
It would revitalize the downtown (as the original mall built in 1964 was meant to do) in a way that has never been done since the railroad was built in West Urbana in 1855 and established what is now the city of Champaign.
“Build it, and they will come,” a line in the movie “Field of Dreams” said. It worked in the movie, and people are still coming long after the movie played.