Letter to the Editor: Ways to improve the Promenade

Dear Editor: 

I like the idea of the Downey Promenade, but I take issue with its design. As Lawrence Christon pointed out, it is an eyesore and does not belong in Downey. It does not even meet the definition of what the word promenade means: a paved public walk, typically one along a waterfront at a resort.

This could still be fixed before it is too late.

What the planners should have envisioned was something maybe like Downtown Disney, or even the Irvine Spectrum. In both of these cases, you get out of your car and have to walk to your destinations. While you are walking, you have the opportunity to see performances, window shop, get ice cream and maybe coffee, sit on benches, meet up with friends before going to dine. It is a much more aesthetically pleasing environment than the sprawling shopping center we have today.

Another Idea that could still be implemented is to look at another project from Irvine, that is also used in San Jose. In Irvine, it is across the street from the Spectrum, called Irvine Village, in San Jose it is called Santa Ana Row. This is a mixed-use area, the ground floors are shopping, restaurants, bars, the upper floors are luxury apartment homes and condos.

The main point to both of these examples is that the shopping experience is combined with a feeling of getting out to meet people, and walk around, not pull into one parking spot, then get back in my car to go to another store, then do the same again, and that is what our current "promenade" is.

There is still time to fix this, there is still empty space along Bellflower Boulevard to create a parking structure, and start to tear out the current parking lots to build in Promenades, so that people park once and then walk around.

The mixed-use examples can also be built on those parking lots too, and that would help with housing issues in Downey, as well as making a nice place to shop and live.

Let us stop using viable spaces in Downey to build more urban sprawl, instead let us think ahead and build nice things that draw people outside of Downey to us to spend their money. We are circled by all the major freeway systems, that makes Downey a fantastic place to live and work, just stop building ugly projects.

Chris Angulo-Bertram
Downey