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LETTER: Glenwood should stop waiting

I read the column titled “Dreaming of a Calmer, Quieter Downtown” with total disbelief. It’s a little too late for that.

There have been studies, and studies of studies. Hal Sundin and I sparred with letters to the editor, way back with the “original” bypass, that got renamed “alternate route.” I was for the bypass, Mr. Sundin, against a bypass. There were speed bumps, planters, and concrete barriers to make sure the traffic stayed on Grand Avenue. When the Rio Grande rail line was vacated, it was fought tooth and nail by some of us, to put a bypass there. The prevailing wisdom put a bike path on that traffic corridor.

The canyon construction was going to kill downtown. The alternate route (pronounced bypass) was going to kill downtown. The Meadows was going to kill downtown. A bypass on the Rio Grande rail line would surely kill downtown. All of the aforementioned items were said to be “killers” of downtown because they would remove traffic from Grand.



So now, the same traffic that some fought so hard to keep on Grand, now needs to be removed, so it won’t kill downtown? I’m hoping Mr. Sundin will write a good comedy piece (as always) explaining his, and his cohorts’, contradictory opinions. May I suggest a working title of “Oops … I shot my foot again.”

If anything in the past 35 years has turned out to be truth, it’s that the NIMBY, stop development, never change this little town attitude, has screwed Glenwood firmly into the position it now finds itself.



That’s why Mr. Bennett’s article is so sad. Glenwood has had many chances … 13, I believe. The same attitudes and people that stopped bypasses now scream wait, let’s study a bypass. The attitudes expressed in Mr. Bennett’s article are the singular reason traffic is so bad downtown today. Wait hasn’t worked previously, and it won’t now.

Glenwood needs to look at solutions … maybe overpass pedestrian bridges mid-block in the 800 and 900 blocks. Anything except, stop development, stop progress, wait and study, and wait some more, until it’s too late.

Brad Gates

New Castle


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