From the story in today’s Patriot News, the future of Harrisburg looks pretty bleak.  And that’s not surprising; it’s easy to beat up on your hometown.  Everybody does it.

But what about our beloved nightlife?  Remember that our downtown nightlife as we know it today is still very young.  It was born into a market of propsperity and thrived largely due to the cleanliness and safety of the area.  From virtual desertion (The Vault aside), along came 5:01.  A few months later came Eclipse.  Then the floodgates opened and brought us Mars, Noma, Fisaga, Red Door, KoKoMo’s, Cragin’s, Molly B’s, and many others.  Enterprising hot dog vendors (who are missed dearly) bought carts and peddled their wares on the grass in front of the garage.  That video store that no one remembers flipped into a pizza parlor.  You get the idea.

In an area starving for nighttime entertainment options, downtown flourished beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

So what’s going to happen when people stop feeling safe?  It doesn’t matter how safe they actually are, it only matters how safe they feel.  It seems like we can’t open the newspaper without Yet Another Headline about Harrisburg PD cuts.  Judging by the number of stories, I’m reasonably certain that we’ve lost approximately 10,000 - 12,000 officers.  Don’t get me wrong; Harrisburg’s police department is the worst place to trim funding, especially given our growing crime rate.  We need to begin by trimming administrative salaries elsewhere.

For example, what if we tie the salaries and compensation packages of our elected officials to metrics such as tax rates, unemployment, school performance, and median income.  There could even be bonuses and penalties for things such as budget surpluses or defecits!  But I’m getting off my main point:

Just as downtown came together as an interconnected series of ventures, so can it come apart.  For the first time in five years, venue owners are going to have to deal with people’s perception of downtown.  Since we all know that perception is generally only loosely based upon reality, this is going to be a hard battle to fight.