Santa Claus parade

"The wages in this town just won't support high dollar arts nor specialty shops and food."

This will do no good as to persuading the rose-colored glasses folks to return to reality but here goes anyway from a "nay-sayers" point of view....

middiemom:

"I also want to say kudos to Judy Gileand. It was nice to see you there still being involved in city functions despite all of the nay-sayers."

middiemom, there is a mountain of evidence that has been documented, right here on this forum, that supports the facts that Judy Gilleland has done an incredible amount of damage to this city as city manager. Her relationship with the community, outside the inner sanctum referred to as "friends of city hall", is very poor. Her relation with her city building employees during her tenure was reported as very poor. She was a "my way or the highway" type of manager with a tyrant-like, dictatorial attitude with some nastiness thrown in. Hardly the way to handle people and get them to cooperate with you. I would imagine that her job performance would have been graded as very low if the community and her subordinates would have had a chance to evaluate her.

middiemom:

"Downtown is making a comeback!"

With over a decade of attempts and millions spent on themes, gadgets and other PR disasters, along with a theme of arts that will never attract enough downtown to warrant a success statement, I believe the statement you made is a tad bit premature at best. If one were to drive downtown on any given day, one would immediately notice the empty stores, the lack of traffic indicating a lack of interest from most in this city. The outsiders brought in for the arts theme just aren't enough to present a "it's a busy downtown" picture as yet, therefore negating your response of a comeback. It won't "come back" with it's current arts theme. The arts are too limiting in interest and appeals to a small segment of society, especially in a blue-collar city like Middletown. The arts people just don't understand that you cannot change a town that has been, and will always be a working class, factory driven city and not an arts mecca as they would like to have. Again, wrong theme that will never fit nor be accepted in this town. I would be willing to bet that if they changed their focus and offered some entertainment/shopping that would appeal to the majority who live here, they would see a faster growth pattern. Your "new hot yoga classes in the old Journal building" may have very few in attendence as yoga and wine (interests from wanna be, egocentric upper crust, I've got a career, not a job, yuppies started long ago) have no interest with most who live here.

In general, the people of this city are hard working middle/lower middle class blue-collar folks. Always have been. You can't bring, nor do they want, culture to the table. NASCAR, not horse racing. Beer, not wine. Burgers and fries, not a gourmet fru fru burger with a pickle slice and chips on the side for 15 bucks. The wages in this town just won't support high dollar arts nor specialty shops and food. One must understand the demographics of the city to offer what is of interest.