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The Messenger-Inquirer Dan Heckel Column: Dan Heckel

Posted on: Monday, 6 February 2006, 12:00 CST

By Dan Heckel, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

Feb. 6--One definition of progress is "moving forward." So my question of the day is, "Can you call something progress if it takes you back to where you once started?"

I thought of this when reading about plans to turn the vacant former Winn-Dixie store at 25th and Frederica streets into a "neighborhood shopping center."

Eric DeVorkin of Sandor Development Co., a Scottsdale, Ariz., company, is very excited about the potential for the corner, and that's good news for Owensboro. Anything that would improve the depressing nothingness there is a positive.

But I'll admit that I thought it was funny that the new concept for that lot is as a shopping center, since that's what it started as in 1957. In fact, when I moved here in 1986, it was still called the South Frederica Shopping Center, even though it was the middle of town.

I wish DeVorkin and his company luck, but I started to wonder what other retrofits we should consider here in the name of progress. Here are a few ideas:

-- We should raze the convenience store at 18th and Triplett streets and build a steak house. Perhaps we could name it for a friendly son of an Italian immigrant. Gabe has a nice ring to it.

-- We should knock down the Morton Holbrook Judicial Center downtown and build a department store where kids could stop for a treat at the soda fountain. Maybe Kresge would be interested in moving in.

-- We could relocate the Goodwill store on West Parrish Avenue and build a drive-in movie theater. Since we have the Big Dipper and Moonlite in that area, perhaps we could call it the Starlite.

-- We could remove J.R. Miller Boulevard and put down some nice train tracks. We could leave some of it paved and just call it, oh I don't know, Lewis Street?

-- Seems like a Malco movie theater would be a nice fit on Frederica between Fourth and Fifth streets.

-- How about we take that big empty store on the south end of Towne Square North that used to be Service Merchandise and turn it into some sort of continuing use -- please.

Then again, maybe one return to past greatness at a time is enough.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

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Source: Messenger-Inquirer

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