Hot Dog!

On May 19th, the ARCC, the Post Star, Adirondack Plastics and Recycling, and the Glens Falls BID will co-sponsor two seminars on "Placemaking" featuring a presentation by the Project for Public Spaces. The first session is at 1:00 p.m., at the Queensbury Hotel, and the second is at 6:30 p.m., at the Fort Edward Fire Station, on Route 4, in the Village of Fort Edward. The Project for Public Spaces has worked with downtown and village leaders in 86 countries to help them take simple, practical and meaningful steps to create places that people want to visit.

I've had the pleasure of participating in 2 seminars facilitated by the Project for Public Spaces. They have photos that clearly show how placemaking can make a real difference in revitalizing a downtown or village. In addition, they have photos showing the mistakes many communities have made over the years creating beautiful places that no one wants to use or visit. The comparison is striking and very informative so we hope people will attend either of these free seminars.

So what does this have to do with hot dogs?

The revitalization of our cities and villages will be decided by property owners and existing businesses rather than hot dog cart vendors. While we might want to perhaps consider allowing more existing businesses to "encroach" upon City sidewalks to draw attention to themselves and to create places people want to visit, we should NOT open up our sidewalks to vendors who don't pay property taxes and who don't invest in our dowtown buildings. Believing that allowing hot dog cart vendors to utilize our public sidewalks represents economic development is quite simply not true. They don't create places but instead unfairly compete with those property owners and businesses that do.