Take On Life

Hi everyone,

When was the last time you parked your car and ran several errands at once?

Last week?

Last year?

Never?

And, for the record, a trip to the mall doesn’t count, at least not in this context.

In some local downtowns — Ridgefield, Danbury, New Milford and Bethel, for example — it’s pretty easy to grab some lunch, visit the bank, hit the library and get a haircut in one walking tour.

Not only is it convenient, it also saves gas, promotes exercise, support local merchants and reduces those choking emissions spilling out of your exhaust pipe.

What’s not to love here?

This is how U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood describes these neighborhoods:

“Livability means being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery (store) or post office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids at the park, all without having to get into your car.

“Livability means building the communities that help Americans live the lives they want to live — whether those communities are urban centers, small towns or rural areas.”

A website — www.walkscore.com — has taken the livability idea and run with it. Or at least, walked with it.

The website has devised a system that measures the “walkability” of any address and gives it a Walk Score from 0 to 100.

Go ahead, try it for yourself. Enter any address in the world.

It could be your house. It could be your town hall.

It could be the Tower of London, which has a Walk Score of 92, by the way.

Closer to home, The News-Times, at 333 Main St. in Danbury, came back with a Walk Score of 94.

That’s not so surprising given the number of retail stores, restaurants, banks, law offices and the like on Main Street.

This is good news for the future of downtown Danbury. If nothing else, the high score validates downtown’s broad access to walkable services.

And yet, it’s also evidence that Danbury needs more downtown housing — both new development and development over commercial space — for residents to take advantage of these benefits and pump money into the local economy.

Given the time, the money (the biggest obstacle here) and a clear, consistent vision, the bones and the potential are present to make downtown Danbury special.

Really special.

“Downtown has enormous potential, but you have to do the right things, and you have to do them well,” Dennis Elpern, the city’s director of planning, said Thursday.

“We certainly have an interest in more downtown housing — for singles and young adults and for empty-nesters and retirees,” Elpern added. “The basis is already there for future development.

“We want to attract new people who want to live downtown. We also want to attract people from the outlying communities to come to downtown,” he said.

Make no mistake, none of this is easy.

Many of these downtown ideas exist solely in the Main Street Renaissance Task Force Report released in 2010. But the important part is that they exist, a dynamic blueprint for the future.

Understand, there’s already progress being made in downtown Danbury — and here’s the best part — it’s all within walking distance of Main Street.

From Brookview Commons and the updated shopping plaza at 33 Crosby St., to the transformation of the old police department lot into a health care center, senior housing and a Union Saving Bank office, progress is being made downtown.

The complete revitalization of downtown Danbury is still years away, of course. But rest assured, it’s getting closer each and every day.

You might even say it’s almost within walking distance.