Pandemic planning-Assume Benevolence

Fairfax, adapting. How can we help restore our downtown?

"I have a 3X5 index card thumb tacked to the bulletin board in my kitchen," writes Renee Goddard, Mayor of Fairfax, "it reads: “Assume Benevolence”." This in the latest of a series of Special Edition Fairfax Updates. Always a good read, yesterday's Update announced a Presentation on the Use of Outdoor Spaces to Assist Downtown Businesses to be held, virtually, on Wednesday the 27th at 6 PM PST. Why the boldface? Because I want you to attend, and invite you to do so while wishing well and assuming the same of others. But....

Fairfax must learn to use its spaces, indoors and outdoors, differently because what is happening in those spaces has changed. Currently, there is no on-site dining, little in-store shopping, hardly any "normal" commerce at all. Even moving around downtown has become challenging or, in spots and at times, actually impossible, if one is serious about the geometry of our social distancing orders. Those orders will evolve, but they aren't going away any time soon. Again, things must change...but how?

That's what Wednesday's meeting, sponsored by the Town Council, is about. John Bela will present a range of possibilities for the precious few blocks that Fairfax calls our primary commercial district, and some data about how that space is used on a now-typical COVID weekend day....

There's John, surveying traffic. Not an unpleasant way to spend a Saturday morning.

John is a recent transplant, close friend, and a genius at reconfiguring public spaces to better serve the humans who occupy them. Together we have spent quite some hours researching what other communities are doing (just one amazing resource here), and some more time walking through the downtown--masked and mostly six feet apart--debating how those examples might translate to here. There are a lot of options to be considered, but the status quo isn't one of them. And that's why I want you there: change must come, it must be designed as a match for this crisis, and the more people who recognize and attest to that the better.

I really do believe my fellow villagers are benevolent (and smart, too), but I'm also sure that for some of them benevolence will manifest itself as resistance, a reflection of their desire--understandable but simply not of the moment--to hold things in place. We need to get past that as quickly as possible to avoid wasting precious time and to make it clear, to each other and to the Council, that the large majority of people who depend on our downtown recognize that something really new is needed.

We will all be impacted by changes to how our business district works. We may be left with a struggling and depopulated downtown if we choose wrong, perhaps with a more attractive and economically sustainable one if we choose right. But one way or another we have to choose, and that 'we' should include you. See you Wednesday?

Marquee at Peri's Bar, May 2020.