From my experience the phenomena of urban renewal efforts tearing down large parts of downtown areas and leaving behind parking fields seemed to be the rule rather than the exception. It always seemed that the funding for the proposed "revitalization" projects never materialized. Over the years various smaller projects have filled in some of the empty lots, but not very well nor very successfully. The two examples that I am most familiar with are my hometown of Nyack, NY a lovely river village that had half of its downtown area torn down and left vacant for many years. Eventually an upscale strip mall and some other buildings filled in some of the vacant areas. Also North Adams, Massachusetts, where the urban renewal effort tore down the entire south side of the downtown, leaving the stores on the north side facing vacant lots for 30 years. I believe that they finally convinced a K-Mart to build on much of the vacant land. Garet Livermore Director of Education New York State Historical Association The Farmers' Museum PO Box 800 Cooperstown, NY 13326 Voice - 607-547-1490 Fax - 607-547-1499 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Monje" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 10:19 AM Subject: Small-town urban renewal > I have run across a couple of instances of "urban renewal" projects in small cities or towns in New York in the 1970s in which old structures were razed but little or nothing new was built to replace them. Was that sort of thing common, or were these most likely local eccentricities? Has anything been written about this?