Glens Falls is getting there

Jacquiline Touba is one of the creative people who make the city special

Glens Falls is the little city that can. The longer I live here, the more impressed I am by its slow but determined progress.

If you look back 30 years — we moved here in 1993 — it’s impressive how far the city has come, especially downtown, which has transformed from a collection of empty storefronts in elegant, decrepit old buildings to a diverse assortment of shops, lounges, bars and eateries that gets livelier each year.

In November, when Bella and I voted at the Village Green apartment complex (completely rebuilt in 2009), we ran into Bill Loeb, who was serving as a poll worker. Seeing him always makes me think of the way traffic 30 years ago used to race around downtown on a series of one-way streets, with drivers not even looking to either side as they hurried toward some other destination.

Bill talked to me one day about how the traffic flow should be switched to two-way, because forcing drivers to go slower would make downtown safer for pedestrians and be good for businesses. I didn’t see the point, since no one shopped downtown anyway.

But Bill, like other Glens Falls leaders over the ensuing years, was seeing not what the city was but what it could be, and coming up with ways to make their vision real.

Progress has been gradual and organic and, occasionally, as with the growth of a cultural and artistic hub in and around the old shirt factory building on Lawrence Street, surprising.

Now, with ground finally broken for the market center on South Street — the centerpiece of the $10 million state-funded downtown revitalization initiative — Glens Falls is on the brink of having a fully realized, small but special downtown that is diverse, busy and beautiful.

New businesses are opening and old ones thriving throughout the city, including half a dozen new shops (including three bookstores!) in the Shirt Factory, which was packed on the weekends before Christmas; the Golden Monkey Lounge and Taco Kings Jalisco on South Street; and Rude Betty and Mikado in bigger, more prominent spots on Glen Street.

Jeff Flagg, the city’s economic development director, told me four different people contacted him recently about opening businesses in Glens Falls.

“We don’t have a lot of open spaces left,” he said.

He expects the market center to have its walls up by fall, and then, he said, “downtown will be by and large finished.”

I see it as downtown reaching the start of a new era, leaving behind its years in the doldrums of urban malaise and beginning a long passage of creative prosperity.

The parking spots no one used three decades ago are harder to find now, and the upper stories formerly inhabited by pigeons are apartments filled by people who shop and eat in storefronts that used to be empty.

The slow-motion transformation of downtown Glens Falls, far from stopping, will probably speed up now. In a few years, the city will be booming, and we’ll have the luxury of complaining about the traffic.

Jacquiline Touba

Bella and I ran into Jacqui Touba on Saturday while browsing in the Shirt Factory. We looked at her recent artwork and bought one of her coloring books, which features her own black-and-white drawings of mythological birds. She suggested Bella would like the book, and when we got home and dug up some colored pencils, Bella went to work, spending a rare contented hour on a quiet activity. I had heard that people with Alzheimer’s often enjoy coloring, but a previous attempt had gone nowhere — maybe the book wasn’t right.

Jacqui is one of the creative, determined, community-oriented people who have made Glens Falls a special little city. Her history is impressive — years of study and work in Holland, Egypt and Iran; teaching at Skidmore; founding and leading the World Awareness Children’s Museum; constant community involvement — but what is wonderful is her lively engagement. Her eyes gleam as she takes you in, her conversation is spiced with straightforwardness. She says what she wants to say, then she’s done, and — you can feel it — she has other things to do. Over the years, many of those things have gotten done, making our little city a better place.

Bella sits on our couch with Ringo, holding one of Jacquiline Touba’s coloring books, “Explore Birds in Mythology through Coloring Pen & Ink Drawings.”