It’s been 20 years since the downtown business owners and residents of Buda heard the screeching fire sirens.
Twenty years of rebuilding.
Twenty years of new businesses – coming and going.
And now driving through downtown Buda, every spot is filled. It is not a dying downtown, as is the case with so many small towns.
The night of July 10, 1994 was expected to change the face of downtown Buda. The original buildings from a large part of one block were destroyed.
And the lives of the business owners were destroyed, many never recovering.
The morning after, they picked through the rubble, trying to find anything worth keeping.
And what was worth keeping? The downtown of Buda. In the rebuilding process, the storefronts were kept the same. Even the lot where the dental office was built kept the character of the town.
It is a vibrancy that is wonderful to behold.
But it cannot be maintained without the incredibly hard work of the downtown building owners and businesses. Looking back 20 years ago, the businesses were open on weekends, hoping for a few residents and a few visitors to darken their doors and step inside.
That’s not the case today. Drive through Buda any time of day and on any day of the week and parking spots are full. Every building has a business, and they are thriving.
It is a combination of restaurants and bars, boutiques, coffee shops and offices. Despite what some people think – including some on the city council – you cannot take a single part of that equation out of the mix and hope to maintain a vibrant downtown.
Yes, there are problems, including noise and traffic.
But there are so many benefits – a local place to eat, sales tax dollars flowing into the coffers of the city, property tax values supporting our schools.
And there are no vacancies.
Ask so many small town newspaper publishers or city managers across the country what it is like to look out the window and see vacancy signs. They would all take our problems and our fights over their terrible alternative – a dying town.
Bars and restaurants need nightlife, offices and boutiques need daytime hours. Residents need to remember that businesses pay a larger burden of the tax dollars.
It may not be perfect.
But it is better than a city ringing the death knell of its downtown.
