Better Use of Transit, Accessible Streets Would Improve Grand Center’s First Night for Everyone

For the longest time now, Grand Center has been focusing on concentrating activities within its vague boundaries to the disadvantage of the rest of the community. This is true of the efforts to stop the renovation of the Kiel downtown, and of the poaching of programs from the rest of the region, like the relocating of KWMU and KDHX. This is not dissimilar to Jane Jacobs' complaints about Carnaegie Hall shuttering in the name of Lincoln Center. A concentration around the center leaves the rest of the city dry. If that concentration is then too isolated, then it too will dry up. I do not want to see the region's art community concentrated and then bled, and I assume Grand Center doesn't want that either. Hence, this post.

I enjoyed this year's First Night celebration in Grand Center, but there was one nagging thing that bothered me the entire evening.