The Elizabethton Planning Commission last week got off track and waded into controversial water, voting 4-0 to recommend to the City Council that the canopies and the pillars supporting them be removed from downtown.
The canopies were not a part of the agenda for last Thursday’s meeting, but rather came up at the end of the meeting when the Commission was asked to approve and offer recommendations to the City Council on the 2017-22 Capital Improvements Plan.
Two of the planners — Melanie Sellers and Vickie Manuel — said removing the canopies would make the downtown more attractive and eliminate the dark shadows cast on storefronts. Furthermore, they said the canopies promote dampness and mold and are expensive to maintain. Sellers said the demolition would give the downtown section a more traditional look.
Elizabethton in many ways is a “traditional” town. It has a network of well-connected streets and blocks and a variety of public spaces, and has amenities such as stores, schools, and places of worship. It’s about as traditional as you can get.
Elizabethton, too, is a unique town. Not too many towns are located at the base of a mountain, have a river running through it with geese and ducks and a 100-year-old plus Covered Bridge, nor a Tweetsie Trail for folks to walk on or ride a bicycle. The canopy downtown is just as unique to the town as these other things.
Visit Elizabethton at night, and you will find people walking downtown because of the well-lit and covered sidewalks. They walk downtown on evenings when the weather is foul, providing them cover from the rain and snow. They feel safe because of the well-lit sidewalks.
Visitors to the car show on Saturday evenings in the summer bring their lawn chairs and sit under the canopy.
The canopy was built in the early 1970s as a part of the Elizabethton Urban Renewal project, and a couple of years ago, the City began some maintenance work on the canopies. The budget for 2017-18 includes $140,000 for portions of canopy replacements. Up to this point, very little had been spent on the canopy.
Several Elizabethton merchants have expressed their disapproval of the Planning Commission’s vote as well as several readers of the Elizabethton STAR.
We remember when Urban Renewal began in Elizabethton and the Elizabethton Housing Authority proposed tearing down the Veterans Monument at the eastern end of Elk Avenue and building a smaller replica of it in the Covered Bridge Park. Not to be. An old soldier from World War I, George Dugger, Sr., rose to the occasion and fought to keep the Monument intact where it was first built and remains to this day. The fight ended up in court, and Dugger gained an ally in Chancellor Dayton Phillips, who ruled that the Monument would remain on its original site.
Some of the arguments at that time by those who wanted to tear the Monument down was that the old landmark was structurally unsound, a traffic hazard, “unsightly,” in the wrong place, and required too much maintenance. Some of those same arguments could be used for removing the downtown canopy.
Sometimes, for posterity’s sake, it is better to leave things as they are. The canopy, like the old Veterans Monument, helps make Elizabethton a unique town, shopper friendly. To remove it would rile a lot of people.
The canopy has covered the sidewalks of downtown Elizabethton for almost 50 years, and many people like it. We hope City Council will overrule the Planning Commission on this one recommendation.