Greenville's free alternative weekly

Ode to a Sidewalk, Paean to a Trashcan

By James D. McCallister

The first of June, 2005, was a red letter day here on the hind-end of the Saluda Avenue retail block. Sure, a few weeks before they’d taken away our trash can and our USPS mail box—our lifelines to the world at large, in other words. But those removals were only a harbinger of the storm to come.

The streetscaping project—“Beauti-Five” to its planners and champions—had been looming for years and years when all the chips (in the form of $30 million) finally fell into place in mid-2004. The anticipation of the inexorably eventual upheaval of our sidewalks and thoroughfares had been discussed, predicted, and feared for eons, it seemed. And now here the nightmare was, right in our faces.

To be sure, we on the leeward side of Saluda had already had a taste of the disruption to come, and a big taste indeed: We’d watched as the other side of the street had been torn asunder. For the most part during that period, though, our lives (and the bottom line) appeared to be stable but for inconvenience, as well as a surfeit of uncertainty as we awaited Our Turn.

The time was nigh. By June 2, 2005, the sidewalks on our side of the street were dirt, and the dreaded welcome-carpets came out in front of each storefront—filthy, shocking, yes—but, oh, would it get worse.

The odd element in the initial weeks of disruption was that, in spite of it all, business was close to normal. And that, my friends, was a great surprise indeed as we watched:

Multiple diggings to lay the various types of piping that were rigid and otherwise, the tubes like black and sea-green arteries beneath the asphalt of the city’s streets; crews coming in to work and then, within an hour or two, giant, muddy holes appearing; parking spaces that were disappeared like outspoken dissidents trapped under fascist regimes; geysers of spurting water erupting into the Carolina afternoon as hidden pipes were struck repeatedly; backhoes grumbling and tearing into the ground, dump trucks groaning and whining and disgorging their dusty loads, jackhammers…well, jacking.

NOISE and DUST were all we knew—and yet, business wasn’t half bad, overall. In fact, at the end of the month, sales were up ten percent from the comparable period the previous year—well before the project had even begun anywhere in the neighborhood at all.

Our spirits were buoyed.

We were babes in the woods, though.

Saluda Avenue, we learned (or at least our chunk of it), was to be ground zero for some of the most complicated work to be done on the whole project—work that would take months, and months, and ultimately, two full calendar years to complete. And, as it turned out, the most invasive aspects of the project impacted us at the absolute worst times: Back to school. The holiday season. Spring break and Easter weeks. It couldn’t have been planned—or worked out, as the case may be—any worse for us.

The work is mostly done, now, but, as of this writing, is yet to be, like, complete-complete, man. Yes, we’re only still awaiting what they call “final paving” insofar as the streetscaping is concerned, but we at the Five Points Confidential desk worry that work on the new fountain (as well as the proposed Quicksand Arms to be built across the way on what is now the 5 Points Brownfield) will delay the “completion” of our part of the neighborhood for another protracted period.

Worry, hell: We know we’ll be disrupted. Maybe by now, such knowledge is a part of our genetic structure. If you’re a merchant on Saluda Avenue, it’s in your bones.

For those of us hoping that Five Points has finally come through the fire, so to speak, with its dignity and core intact are weary and disheartened at the thought of further inconvenience.

But forget about the spirits and stamina of the merchants: It’s the customer base that we need to rebuild. Putting a building on the Kenny’s lot to house a mere twenty-seven individuals or families who can afford half-million dollar domiciles isn’t going to bring “people” back to the neighborhood, even with the proposed two levels of parking, something we’ve needed in the heart of the neighborhood for ages.

So what am I saying?

Now, those of you out there who know me personally probably perceive me as a pretty pragmatic guy when it comes to dollars-and-sense business matters, rather than the hippy-dippy blithe spirit some may project onto my hirsute and besandaled countenance. But this time, I’m going to uphold the stereotype: The city should buy out the Kenny’s developers, and come up with a plan that restores the parking spaces that were lost, with the remainder of the property to be transformed into a small plot of…wait for it…

Green space.

Think about that. You want customers? We’ve already got banks and drug stores and plenty of shops—we don’t need more of that to bring people down here. They need a reason to come down here, and a reason to stay. A place to park. A place to sit and enjoy the beautiful new fountain. A park bench, a grassy plot of shade in which to eat an Adriana’s ice cream cone or enjoy a Yesterday’s take-out box.

But what do I know? I don’t have money—real money—tied up in that property. None of my business, right?

Well, I do have to live my life down here, and after all these years, I think I know what people want. We’ve got our sidewalks back, we’ve got our trees, we’ve even got our trash can—now all we need is a good reason for people to rediscover 5 Points. If, that is, they can fight their way past the developers, the orange cones, and the unfinished business that is our day-to-day life down here in the trenches.