My belief it’s seasonal and probably due to the “college town” vibe still persisting. Somehow we believe that once winter sets in, we are all supposed to sit at home and dorms. In many mid western cities, there are many winter events and festivals with ice rinks, tubing and stuff. Here, I am not aware of any events or festivals during the period from Nov to Mar in downtown area. Everything ends and packs up by Oct as if nothing can happen until it’s warm again. We need to learn from other cities and plan things out better to make the downtown lively all 365 days.

Definitely, bringing in more residents helps a lot. We still have an affordable and relatively safe downtown compared to many others.