PD Editorial: Old Courthouse Square will be a downtown destination

Take a walk in downtown Santa Rosa, and you might be surprised.

A thriving coffee culture is waking up sleepy streets during the day, the transformation of the AT&T bunker is almost finished, new restaurants and brew pubs are fueling a resurgent nightlife.

For too many years, downtown has been a drive-through, a few blocks of asphalt and cobblestones on the path to somewhere else.

It’s starting to seem like a destination again.

The activity is promising, a hint of the urban revival taking place in cities across the country. But there’s more to be done, beginning with reunification of Old Courthouse Square.

And that’s now on track for next year with the City Council’s commitment to get the job done.

“Today is the time to stop studying it, stop talking about it and start working on it,” Councilman Chris Coursey said at Tuesday’s meeting, alluding to the many years of debate and deliberation that preceded last week’s vote. “Let’s get it done.”

Despite the council’s unanimous decision, the controversy isn’t over. It probably won’t end until long after the square is again free of motor vehicles.

For some people, funneling traffic through downtown as quickly as possible always will be the most important objective.

But there’s already a direct route for those who don’t want to navigate around the square: Highway 101, which flows freely most hours of the day since it was widened to six lanes.

Santa Rosa and Mendocino avenues aren’t expressways, and downtown can be - indeed, for the city’s economic well-being, it needs to be - far more than a waystation between neighborhoods to the north and shopping centers to the south.

Cotati, Healdsburg and Sonoma are enlivened by concerts, farmers markets, street fairs and other gatherings in their downtown plazas. Windsor created a community center with its Town Green, and Petaluma revitalized its central core when a vibrant Theatre District rose up in place of aging warehouses along the waterfront.

Outdoor events fit Northern California’s lifestyle, but they’re more than another opportunity to take advantage of our mild climate. The ripple effects will spread across downtown, with increased foot traffic bolstering local businesses. That, in turn, will create jobs and generate tax revenue to pay for public services.

For more than a century, Old Courthouse Square was the center of downtown Santa Rosa. Times have changed. Downtown is no longer the seat of county government and the criminal justice system. It’s not just a Monday-Friday, 9-5 business district either. It’s a mixed-use area, with shopping, a museum, restaurants and a growing number of residents likely to flock to a square without idling cars and noxious exhaust fumes.

Who knows, when the long-bisected square is again closed, some of those who only pass through downtown might stop and get out of their cars.