Glens Falls is growing more urban and that's good

Traffic is a sign of prosperity

Bella and I go into town most days, sometimes early, sometimes in the afternoon, and sit at Spot Coffee inside on the couches and at a table on the sidewalk.

Ringo roams around at the end of his leash and sits on his haunches and stares at me until I give him pieces of our oatmeal-raisin cookie. Then he lies down, lifting his head to look at other dogs or burbling toddlers.

A lot of young parents are criss-crossing downtown these days with strollers or little kids in tow. Young adults sit and work on their computers in the coffee shop. Others jog down the sidewalk.

This week, Bella and I chatted with a young man who had rigged his bicycle with a seat for his toddler, mounted on the frame just behind the handlebars. The boy had his own small set of handlebars and stirrups for his feet.

“We ride in Cole’s Woods,” Dad said. “He loves it.”

What a contrast downtown is now with 30 years ago, when we moved to Glens Falls!

Never mind bicycles or pedestrians, you could barely find cars in downtown back then, and if you saw one, it was rushing through on its way to somewhere else.

One-way designations on Ridge, Maple/Bay and Glen formed an enormous traffic circle around downtown at that time, with the library and City Park and City Hall inside it.

You could park anywhere you wanted; the problem was finding someplace to go after you parked.

We lived on Bacon Street, a block from the library, until 2001, when we finally gave up on ever being able to get a cup of coffee and moved.

“I can’t believe we don’t even have a coffee shop,” I said to Bella.

Now we have a couple of coffee shops and many other places to eat and drink, casually or in style. 

The same classy old buildings line the downtown streets, but now, for the most part, they’re full — not only with businesses on the ground floor but apartments on the upper floors, which used to be roosts for pigeons.

And unlike so many small cities, the vitality of downtown is complemented by the loveliness of the neighborhoods, with tree-lined streets and flowering bushes on the lawns. I never tire of driving around and looking at the variety of houses in the city. Just the array of porch and doorway styles could fill a coffee table book. 

Occasionally, Bella and I go down to Saratoga Springs to walk around and sit at a table on the sidewalk with a cup of coffee. It’s more congested than Glens Falls, with cars and people, and it feels like a city. It smells like a city. I like that.

Glens Falls is, gradually and haltingly, going in the same direction as Saratoga Springs. People are living downtown. Strangers talk to each other on the street.

Glens Falls hasn’t fit comfortably into the category of “city” during the 30 years we’ve lived here, but we’re growing into it, becoming a real urban center, the last one before the huge, forested expanse of the Adirondack Park.

The city has been a slow-motion success story, building back little by little toward the bustle it had before the Northway was finished in 1967. 

For people who have lived here awhile, it’s easy to notice the increase in annoyances, like traffic, but the alternative of a community crumbling because it can’t afford its own infrastructure is far worse.

Congestion on the roads and sidewalks and in the coffee shop lines is a sign of our growing prosperity. Let’s embrace it.

Crandall Public Library held a book sale Wednesday on the walkways of City Park that drew a crowd.