Editorial: Working on our first impression
A proposed arch over Interstate 75 where the new 42nd Street flyover crosses and would welcome travelers to Ocala has drawn mixed reviews since the idea was first unveiled last week at a City Council workshop meeting.
Some citizens and council members were undoubtedly taken back by the estimated pricetag, $500,000-$800,000. But that price was merely an estimate, and the archway was just an idea from a city administration eager to make Ocala a more attractive and welcoming place.
Whether the artist renderings of the arch the City Council looked at will come to fruition or not is not as important as the fact that the city is beginning to look at its gateways and realizing that something must be done to improve their appearance. The cold hard fact is Ocala’s gateways and main thoroughfares are unattractive. They feature strip centers and chain restaurants and retail outlets stacked who knows how many deep. And it is not just one gateway — U.S. 27, State Road 40, State Road 200, U.S. 441 are all pedestrian at best, ugly at worst.
Ocala/Marion County is in the process of reinventing itself economically. It is going to be a long, hard, calculated process. Part of that economic resurgence will focus on attracting national companies that can have their pick of communities to which they can take their new jobs.
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