2 Problems with Downtown Carbondale

 Oh, I know there are lots of problems with downtown but from my point of view there are two huge ones that need addressing to make downtown a viable shopping area

1. Walkability--downtown is split into two parts, the square and South Illinois. The Amtrak and FirstMid parking lots are a line of demarcation dividing the two area and there is no good reason for a shopper to make the effort to walk from the south end to the north end  and vice versa because most of the businesses in downtown are

2. Destination stores--The businesses in downtown are not the sort of retailers that encourage browsing from one store to another . They are the reason the customer comes into downtown. They shop there and then leave. We have a number of barber shops, smoke shops, liquor stores, hairdressers and tattoo shops that bring people into downtown but they come to patronize those stores and then leave. No one goes from one smoke shop or liquor store to another to see what the other stores have. There is crossover between restaurants and Big Chill as well as the Varsity Center and restaurants and Big Chill. We even see some crossover between Castle Perilous and restaurants but generally people do  not come downtown to shop and get a meal.

It would be nice to see some parking lot infill and more shops that encourage browsing and movement from one to another, but we are not likely to see any additional retail space in either parking lot given the number of empty storefronts on South Illinois.