Get over it

We can’t seem to have a discussion of any serious issue — or non-serious issue — in Huntington without someone bringing up one of two things that happened decades ago.

It happened again last week when the City Council discussed a resolution asking the mayor to not allow a rural Cabell County resident to paint the 8th Street bridge over Fourpole Creek pink. During the public comment session, a woman stood and said something to the effect that this kind thinking is why the Huntington Mall was built in Barboursville.

She didn’t say anything about Interstate 64 being built south of town instead of through it. But she might as well have.

It’s time to drop these two arguments. They don’t add anything to any discussion of issues now facing the city, and they serve only to muddy things up. It’s a lazy way to make a point, and not a good one.

Let’s look at both of them.

First, the mall. Even if a shopping mall had been built in downtown Huntington or where KineticPark now sits, does anyone think a shopping area would not have been built where either the mall or where Merritts Creek Farm now are? And that those two shopping centers would have put a downtown mall or a mall at W.Va. 10 out of business?

Other cities have malls that are empty or dying because new malls are built close by. The Huntington Mall is built at the best possible site in this area for the development of retail business. Neither the Superblock nor KineticPark had room for what has developed at Exit 20 of I-64.

Speaking of I-64. Suppose the state of West Virginia or the federal government say $1 billion has become available to re-route I-64 through the city of Huntington. What neighborhood would you want removed to make way for the road? Would you want a wide swath of the West End destroyed? Fairfield West? Highlawn?

One or more of those neighborhoods would have to go to make way for a new I-64 loop through town. Which one?

Do we route the interstate across the Ohio River at the West End, crossing again in the downtown and taking out part of the South Side?

Can we for once stop fighting battles from the 1950s and try to concentrate on the needs of the 21st century? Do we advance our area today by reliving these fights whenever someone wants to paint a bridge pink or do something else that has nothing to do with where the mall or the interstate were built?

Give it a rest. Please.