We need attractions that bring people who will stay awhile and spend money. A destination attraction.
Downtown is a ghost town. At this point, we need to focus on the basic infrastructure needs (upgrading parks, two-waying streets, lighting streets at night, better integrating existing ground floor retail/dining with the public realm) and simply stop self sabotaging a market that would naturally result in economic opportunity coming to downtown.
As for attractions, we're going in reverse with that right now. Our best short term and likely easiest opportunity is taking advantage of the Landing and repurposing it into a mix of uses that can complement and blend with the private projects either already in the works or planned right around the site. Unfortunately, we're blowing it big time demolishing the building with no vetted idea of what to do with the space afterward. So other than being in a time where social media and puff press releases come out on a regular basis, all we're getting is more of the same failed strategies that didn't work in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.