This is actually very close to where I stand nowadays. This guy heard from Olympia 2012 at a Kiwanas meeting:

It seems I am not the only one that feels it could be so much more than it is now, which is basically a very small collection of good stores and restaurants, but otherwise a ghost-town come 5:30 PM except for several bars and tattoo parlors that bring in customers in the evening time. Every Arts Walk I see the scores of people walking the streets and think that this could be the case every weekend if there was something interesting to bring people in.

...

Dowtown could be so cool. I know people already think it is now, but it is not my vision of it and I am glad to hear I am not the only one. I had a coworker say she did not want “my kind of people” downtown anyway so she didn’t want it to change. I don’t know what she meant by my kind of people (I guess that meant over the age of 26 with wife and 2 small kids) and I chose to ignore that bigotted remark, but my friends, my family and I would all spend more time and money down there if it was vibrant place in the evenings and weekends; live music more often, outdoor cafes, a nice theater showing better movies (no, not Hollywood blockbusters, but something along the lines of a Laemle) are all things I would love to see- but of course this is all just my opinion. Everyone is open to share and fight for theirs if the proposals the Oly2012 group come up with matches up.

This is a very interesting, and to me, sad post. The "my kind of people" remark in the last graph was especially troubling for me because it seems to represent a lot of the emotional baggage people are brining to the isthmus debate.