Jun 2, 2007

Downtown merchants fight flightBy Jane HawesColumbusDispatch.com

Delaware, Ohio — A bicycle-shop owner knows a dip in the road when he sees one. He also knows how to ride it out.

“A year ago, there was essentially 100 percent occupancy downtown, and now there’s 12 vacancies,” said Dan Negley, who operates Breakaway Cycling in the former Delaware livery at 17 W. William St. “But this is probably the third time it’s happened since I opened in ’91. It’ll come around eventually.”

Delaware’s downtown, like many others in county seats, might be in the process of reinventing itself as more of an entertainment district, said Matthew LaMantia, a senior land-use planner with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.

“You make it into a place where people can hang out,” LaMantia said. “You have the movie theater, the restaurants, things where people will want to stay in the city.”

When Negley opened his shop 16 years ago, Delaware’s central business district housed a grocery store, a department store, a couple of shoe stores and a hardware store.

Then Wal-Mart opened south of town in 1993. All of those businesses were gone within five years, replaced with a revolving cast of specialty retail stores.

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