Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl noted that the city “only spent $2,500” to create The Essence of Athens — a blueprint for the city to “Keep us Athens” — but it also took a lot of man hours.
The project, started in May 2013, wrapped up this July.
“I look at this as a chance to actually celebrate who we are,” Wiehl said.
The project calls for new, funky bike racks, making the city parking garage more colorful and adding murals in alleys, among other modifications. There are also sections that define the “DNA of Athens,” such as “our hills” and “our river.”
Meanwhile, there are sidewalks in Athens in horrible shape. Many stretches of streets are without streetlights. Some bricks have even gone missing.
Of the thousand-dollar project, the mayor said: “I suspect most of those things will not be done. It will probably come down to money. We always have priorities — we’ve got to keep the water going, we’ve got to fix the roads.”
Even though Wiehl said the project is somewhat out of left-field, Athens City Planner Paul Logue said the project was worth the time and money because there’s a chance the city’s uniqueness could be under attack from modern development.
“The commercial strip on East State Street looks similar to a strip in Detroit,” he said after finding out I’m from the Motor City. “You really cannot tell where you are in the world.”
Logue spoke somewhat poetically and with passion on this issue.
“There’s no indicators that say I’m in Athens, Ohio versus anywhere else. That to me was kind of a threat. If we’re not thinking forward, we might lose something we love and might not realize that we’ve lost it.”
Logue added “I go to Wal-Mart, too. To me, it’s more about the design. They look the same in Athens as they look in the rest of the world. To me, that’s a problem. Give us design that is unique — even if it’s a Wal-Mart, a McDonalds or a Kroger.”
I hate cookie-cutter neighborhoods as much as the next person. However, the concept of the “Essence of Athens” doctrine is an interesting one.
Most city governments tackle city issues from an it-needs-to-be-done mentality and then, in a while-we’re-on-the-subject manner, addresses the question “wouldn’t it be cool, if …?”
The city, with its “Essence of Athens” doctrine, seems to have done the opposite. City officials and citizens who had input on the project appear to have had a lot of wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if ideas but no real reason to execute them.
They’ve since made a demand for these ideas by crafting a 159-page manifesto of how the city’s “Athens-ness” is somehow being attacked by modern development throughout the city.
Athens officials have told me that up-keep concerns around the city are obviously huge priorities, but they’ve also insisted that keeping an eye on the future — and looking out for a city beloved by so many — is also a priority.
It’s a fine line that all governments have to walk — satisfying all the needs citizens require from their officials.
Being that more than 23,000 Ohio University students live, work and play in Athens, the city should keep paying attention to more immediate concerns as well future ones. While living here — given that a lot of students, employed around town, pay taxes — students should get to reap the benefits of the city’s money, and its leaders’ time.
@joshjame
jj360410@ohio.edu
