A Renaissance for Downtown

If you’re an artist, one of the eternal questions is: How can I show my work?

If you’re a city, one of the eternal questions is: How can we draw people downtown?

In Ventura, both questions were answered by city officials and downtown merchants with the city’s first ArtWalk six years ago.

By now, the event has become such a fixture that it no longer merits headlines. However, we think it still merits your support.

Three times a year, downtown shops and restaurants give space to paintings, sculptures and pottery by Ventura County artists. As many as 8,000 people stroll through, ducking into galleries, studios and display areas. As breezes blow in off the ocean, families greet old friends, sip coffee and, yes, take in a watercolor here, an Expressionist splash of color there.

The next ArtWalk will be Saturday, from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. Free entertainment will be provided by folk singers on one stage, a swing band on another. There will be, as Martha and the Vandellas used to say, dancing in the streets.

The ArtWalk is a good time for all. Restaurants overflow and shops tally twice their usual business, according to city officials. Number-crunchers haven’t calculated the event’s total economic benefit, but it’s certainly more than the $20,000 the city devotes to it annually.

In a region where many old downtown areas decay, it’s refreshing to see one mending itself. Restaurants both moderately priced and decidedly upscale occupy storefronts that not long ago were empty. New shops line Main Street, the Ventura Theater draws concert-goers, and weekend crowds flock to the movie theaters.

Downtown is a work in progress but it’s a better place now than it was a decade ago. Events like the ArtWalk help account for the improvement.