Has anyone been to downtown Corning lately?
I urge my fellow citizens of this fine county to take a tour, preferably in the day time, to see this colorful menagerie of mismatched storefronts, bold murals, and hand-painted business signs. It reminds me of my college cafeteria experience, when cooks cleaned out the fridge and offered us the Sunday Surprise.
I suggest the I-5 route first. Take the Solano Street exit and head east into town. Be very careful as our main street is crooked and bumpy – do not haul a live animal in a trailer down here – and then slowly look left and right as far as your eyes can imagine. Drive all the way to the Corning Health Care District past the Marguerite intersection and turn around in their parking lot.
Now, head west on Solano Street and absorb our fine city from this angle. What do you see? What do you think?
I think our city needs to reenact the downtown Business Improvement District, or BID as it was called in the old days. I was editor of the local newspaper when Ron Craig of the Olive Pit and Bob Jones of Jones Insurance began a movement to encourage local businesses to support each other and make downtown feel unified. It never quite resonated with all main street businesses who were required to pay a small annual fee, somewhere around $50, to meet and discuss how to make Corning look like it did in its glory days.
I’m not exactly sure what happened to their grand idea but it faded over time. Another group stepped in to rescue Corning in the mid ’90s and their work still lives on today. Paulyne White, Barbara Stromness, and Yvonne Boles (I may be missing a few original folks so apologies) single-handedly saved Corning with their formation of the Hometown Revitalization Committee.
These three dynamite gals began a tree planting project. They began at city hall – the old Hotel Maywood site – and planted palm trees for the first block. They enlisted the help of the Corning FFA welding program and planted more trees with decorative iron borders. These trees continue down Solano Street and are really the only thing left tying this once vibrant town together.
Their work didn’t stop with trees. Barbara commissioned a muralist – possibly the first mural in Corning – to depict three people walking into city hall. She dedicated this to her husband, Strom, the city’s attorney for 27 years.
Hometown Christmas is the legacy these three will forever leave behind, though (Paulyne and Yvonne are still going strong). Tired of having festivals in our local parks, these ladies wanted to close Solano Street for an entire day and fill the street with people.
Boy, did they. Inside the old Corning Ford building, vendors were at maximum capacity. Thousands of people flocked to our city, a miniature train carried passengers from one end of town to the other. Live music and laughter filled the streets. At night, the Lighted Christmas Parade finished the event and rivaled Chico’s in quality and quantity of entries.
I miss those days.
I am sure the fine people coordinating buildings and murals have their heart in the right place so I don’t want to suggest no one cares about Corning anymore.
But maybe we need to look to our sister city, Corning, New York. In 2013, it was named America’s Most Fun Small Town. Ninety percent of its buildings are occupied over 5 blocks, which allows apartments and businesses to coexist together on its main street.
Their spokesman, Coleen Fabrizi says no one organization or individual is responsible for the success they’ve had.
“To me, the simple recipe is the three Cs, and that’s cooperation, collaboration, and communication. If those three things are in place, big things can happen.”
OK, Corning, let’s get working on our own recipe, shall we?
Shanna Long is a fourth generation journalist and former editor of the Corning Daily Observer. She and her husband reside in Corning and farm almonds, walnuts and prunes. She can be reached at sjolong@gmail.com, instagram @sjolong.
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June 03, 2021 at 06:27AM
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