A couple California consultants have recommended that Lincoln use strict zoning regulations to help prevent West Haymarket from turning into a rowdy, bar-filled war zone. In the consultants' minds, Lincoln needs to prevent another O Street.
Fair enough. The Downtown area doesn't really need two O Streets -- stretches of bars where the goal is to get drunk. Too much of that sort of thing can be a turn-off to broader audiences. It's reasonable to not want too much of that sort of activity in a small area.
But do we really need to worry about West Haymarket turning into O Street 2? I don't think so. We can look at the existing Haymarket to know that different entertainment districts attract very different crowds, and thus very different businesses. O Street is O Street for many reasons, not least of which is its proximity to UNL. It's a college zone, more or less, particularly at night. The Haymarket, on the other hand, caters to a far more upscale crowd, on average. West Haymarket will be more like the latter and less like the former. Sure, some bars will thrive in the area because of the nature of some of the events that will play at the arena. But they will be buffered by family-friendly fare because, put simply, there will be a demand for such things.
In fact, one need only look at O Street for many examples of how demand affects the nature of businesses. Some bars thrive on O Street as just bars, and good for them. But others have a much different personality during the day -- they cater to the fickle Downtown lunch crowd. They swap personalities because it's good business. There is no reason to expect that Haymarket businesses wouldn't do the exact same thing: one personality for the Dave Matthews Band crowd, a second personality for Husker basketball crowds, and yet another personality for the Sesame Street Live crowd. Some businesses will be specialists, of course, and that's just fine. But others will be generalists, because there's profit to be had there.
Lincoln could go the route of heavy regulation right from the start. It might even work. But that approach is extremely inorganic, and the resultant product will necessarily be stale and unoriginal. If you want stale and unoriginal you can get most of what you're looking for at SouthPointe. I don't think that's what we want from the Haymarket or the greater Downtown area. The area's various personalities are developing and evolving just fine on their own. Rather than rushing fearfully to solutions without problems, let's just see how this beast we're creating grows on its own. Give it twenty years or so. I'll wager we like what we get.
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