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Even in a small town—or, maybe, especially in a small town—downtown becomes a focal point of life. I grew up on the town limits of such a place and, even so, downtown was only a short, safe bike ride away. It had everything a boy needed: a couple of drug stores with soda fountains, comic books, and magazines; a place or two to eat; two theaters, one small and the other only a little larger than a phone booth; small local businesses aplenty; even a daily newspaper (now weekly) that let me deliver papers; and a business, Benjamin Funeral Service, that recently observed its 100^th anniversary.

It will be the last business of my life, entrusted to get me from here to eternity.

That small town—Nowata, Oklahoma—may have had more than one stoplight but a visitor might be hard pressed to notice if he blinked. The stoplights were, primarily, on the north-south (U.S.169) and east-west highways (U.S. 60) that bisected our lives. It was not until years later, when I came to Akron to write mostly columns for the Beacon Journal newspaper, that I came to more fully appreciate and worry about downtowns.

My column days are history but my downtown worries persist. Which makes no sense.

In two books—Wheels of Fortune, which I wrote with David Giffels—and The Indomitable Don Plusquellic—downtown Akron, the historic to the current, took a leading role. Situated on two canals—the Ohio and Erie—that provided the water to power an industry that once had turned Akron into The Rubber Capital of the World, downtown had come to look as if it might shrivel up and blow away. The rubber shops had closed down and most of the giant corporations that owned them—Goodyear, Goodrich, Firestone, and General Tire—had moved on to greener ($$$) pastures.

Downtown reminded me of the small Texas town in The Last Picture Show. (Nowata didn’t even have that when Larry McMurtry’s book was turned into a stunning black-and-white movie; Nowata’s theaters long ago went out of business.) I kept waiting for a tumbleweed to come blowing down Main Street in Akron. Or, maybe a bowling ball. Except when the rubber workers no longer had tires to build, bowling took a hit, too.

Plusquellic, one of the nation’s longest-serving mayors who ran Akron, literally and sometimes roughly, from 1987 to 2015, saved downtown. Had it not been for Plusquellic and the seed corn of rubber—deep knowledge of polymers, of which rubber was just one—Akron could have ended up as shrunken and battered as Youngtown, Ohio, after the steel mills shut down and it had far less on which to fall back and repurpose itself.

The biggest move Plusquellic made appeared foolish to those with less vision. Though Plusquellic could be a foghorn of a leader who blasted opposition right out of the water with intimidating willpower, he also knew how to take a risk and make it pay off. His biggest among many downtown was building Canal Park, a Double-A ballpark that he refused to cheap because this would be the centerpiece of his new downtown Akron. It worked and it is still working, thanks to Ken Babby, owner of the team that plays there.

Old vacant storefronts came down after Stuart Warner, a Beacon Journal columnist, walked Main Street from Cedar Street to Market Street in 1985 and counted 52 empty storefronts. Everyone had seen them but no one had done a count. “I think,” Warner said, “that number stunned all of them.” He meant Plusquellic and others at City Hall.

A downtown is like a home’s front porch, foyer (if there is one), and living room. It is a  city’s welcome mat and showpiece. It sets a tone. Plusquellic seized the moment. After Canal Park was built, other businesses opened, particularly restaurants and establishments in which a person could have a cold drink, adult or otherwise. North of the ballpark, the city created Lock 3, a park-like, practical response to renewal. That has been a hit, too. Every season something is going on to lure people downtown.

When Plusquellic left office, the work he had begun continued. Some, a person could see, like developer Tony Troppe’s “BLU Zone,” in the Historic District at Main and Market streets. It includes BLU Jazz+ nightclub, BLU Plate restaurant, and a 71-room BLU-tique Hotel in the United Building. If Troppe led the way supporting Plusquellic’s downtown, many others joined the parade and have or are beginning to contribute mightily, including Joel Testa in Northside and those involved in the $42-million Bowery Project on Main Street, that includes turning much of the Landmark Building into apartments. Millions have been spent that a person can see and appreciate, and even more to make an antiquated sewer system meet modern environmental standards.

By the end 2020, after $31 million and two years of construction had turned downtown into an obstacle course at best, a blockade at worst, Mayor Dan Horrigan said it ultimately had made “the heart of downtown . . . safer, more accessible, more beautiful, and more livable.” And then, COVID-19 made it unsafe to inhabit downtown offices, those places to which hundreds, even thousands of workers come each day and, tangentially, support other downtown businesses. Again, they are under duress.

“Downtowns are not going to die, exactly,” Jorge Guzman, an assistant professor of management at Columbia University, told the Associated Press for a story that appeared in the Beacon Journal. “But [downtowns are] going to be a little bit more of a mix, more residential, and mixed-use concepts.”

Business meetings are conducted via Zoom in this new virtual-and-remote work world that has caused some businesses to physically downsize and move out. That includes the Beacon Journal, which forsook its Exchange and High streets building made famous by the presence of the great editor John S. Knight to move to a nearby smaller space. At least the newspaper remains downtown where Mr. Knight intended. I also worked for his Miami Herald newspaper which has been removed from its prime Biscayne Bay location worth too much as real estate for new owners to retain after buying the Herald.

After going to downtown Akron to work for 25 years—most of them at the newspaper—much gives me pause about not only Akron’s new challenge but also the return of a feeling that something is again dying in the downtown I first saw in 1981. This time, I see no Don Plusquellic to save it. I can recommend a good Nowata funeral director.