Industrial City Restricts What Goes Downtown As Piece of Rejuvination Plan

LONGVIEW, WA-Downtown Longview has all the base ingredients of a charming downtown, according to a consultant the city hired to help it bring in more tourism business. With its older buildings, quality restaurants and individual assets like the Columbia Theater, this blue-collar city on the Columbia River has a tons of potential, say consultants for Baltimore-based Chesapeake Group, who are being paid $47,500 to develop a downtown rejuvenation plan.

To help draw out that potential, the city’s Downtown Advisory Group is recommending a new zone for downtown to help the city regulate what businesses locate there. The new zone, to be voted on next month, would restrict manufacturing and production businesses such as printers or commercial bakeries, thrift stores and “beer parlors” from locating in the heart of the city. Additionally, churches, bingo halls and other large gathering places would become conditional uses for which a special permit would be necessary.