100 West Center (looking west) in ca. 1878
Recently my Municipal Council colleagues and I received a
poignant letter from a longtime Provoan.
Though the letter primarily addressed a separate issue, it also lamented
the changing cityscape in downtown Provo.
The writer fondly recalled former days when downtown Provo was in full
charm and worried that it has slid too far to ever regain what once was. It was not just the loss of stately buildings
all in a row, busy shops, or a destination with pride of place. It was something deeper, akin to the loss of
a center, a heart, where generations could feel what it meant to be at home in
Provo.
150 West Center (looking east) in ca. 1969
The City administration’s recent move to rebrand Provo with new slogans, icons, and wayfinding was designed to capture Provo’s distinction as the capital of “coming home.” Though such sentiment extends citywide, it refers particularly to the city’s heart—its downtown. Anyone with a sense of Provo’s past will recognize, as the letter-writer did, that downtown was coming unraveled, that it no longer presented its best face. Moreover, its recovery would require displacement, rearrangement, removal, and replacement.
Increasingly Provo’s downtown promises to become the
unique urban center of Utah Valley. The
confluence of new business, new transportation, new construction, new uses—all
within the traditionally-defined array of city blocks—will cause downtown to
rise, figuratively and literally. It
will be a place of vibrant, synergistic, and decidedly mixed usage—a happening
place, “with it” domestically, commercially, spiritually, artistically,
corporately, civically, historically. It
will be home to great and small, noisy and serene, metal-sheened and
green. Ultimately it will hardly
resemble its former self, and it will go on changing.
Downtown Today
Will Provo’s center hold?
Will it grow up with good-hearted hominess and pioneer virtues—hard
work, fearlessness, provident outreach, and big dreams—intact? Time will tell. Much will depend on the emergence of a
critical mass of people who are there to live, work, shop, dine, tour, be
entertained, or invest. A bold new
chapter has opened, with implications for all who call, and who will call,
Provo home.
Hal Miller
Provo Municipal Council, District 3
