The Herald-Zeitung

Later this month, the New Braunfels Downtown Masterplan Steering Committee will embark on a four-stop tour of Texas downtowns to “better understand what works there and what doesn’t.”

They will stop in Denton, Georgetown, Grapevine and McKinney, towns similar in size to New Braunfels.

As they tour these towns, they must frame their learning in this context: Downtown New Braunfels could be improved, but it is not broken.

Change must not be made for the sake of change; change is not always progress.

New Braunfels has a downtown that planners across the nation dream of creating.

It is multi-use — an improving combination of apartments, offices, high quality retail and restaurants.

Downtown New Braunfels has a focal point with the Main Plaza. It is pedestrian friendly with wide sidewalks and regularly spaced benches.

The small town feel of New Braunfels has been retained in downtown. After driving on I-35 or along the Loop, where traffic is busy and stores are in strip malls, the downtown area is a sigh of relief, a reminder of where we really live.

Downtown is an accomplishment — the reward of concerted effort on the part of business leaders who care about this community.

A column by publisher Doug Toney printed in this newspaper in November 2004 shows that downtown revitalization has been a process.

The column painted a picture of the busiest shopping day of the year — the day after Thanksgiving.

“About 9:30 a.m.,” he wrote, “I drove to downtown New Braunfels. You could have thrown a grenade and probably not injured a single person. San Antonio Street had very little traffic and the parking spots along either side of the street were nearly all empty.”

In five years, that has started to change. Downtown is returning to its place as the true center of the city, the soul of New Braunfels.

As the New Braunfels Downtown Masterplan Steering Committee searches for what we could be, in Denton, Georgetown, Grapevine and McKinney, they must remember that those towns are a similar size to New Braunfels, but they are not the same.

The committee must not forget what we are. They must not forget to be proud of downtown New Braunfels, even as they focus on its shortcomings.