Relax – Cheyenne Downtown Development Will Happen – Someday

In other cities around the country, there are real success stories of many American downtown makeovers, but not one of them happened fast. We may need patience with Cheyenne's Downtown Development Authority.

Look at “The ‘Miracle’ of Asheville” (North Carolina). The writer in revitalization.com is a native who was there before Asheville’s downtown comeback began in the 1970s & 80s. He saw it not quite the same as one local newspaper had recently remembered it happening in the 1990s. He mentioned that, “Plucks one decade out of a four-decade ... saga.”

More than infrequently we get updates on the Cheyenne Downtown Development Authority, and each time we may think, “That sounds like a plan. When can we look forward to it coming to life?”

Well, the perspective we can take from our Asheville friend is that nothing is coming to life overnight – though we also hope it won’t be a whole 40 year saga. In fact, we may imagine their planning began in the '70s, but downtown didn't blossom until the '90s.

Maybe we'll be luckier in Cheyenne. Whenever we start the real rebirth, I just hope we'll remember how long we talked about it, all the way back to 2017 - and certainly much earlier than that.

The new DDA Director really should be announced to Cheyenne any day now - really.