Inexpensive ideas for downtown Albert Lea:

♦ Close off Main Street on a Thursday evening. Set out folding chairs. Hold a concert, even if it is free and just for fun. It could be a rock band. It could be a jazz band. It could be anything.

♦ Work with several venues throughout the downtown to have an art walk. On the first Friday of every month, change the art on the walls of galleries and businesses. That day would become the First Friday Art Walk. Businesses would stay open until 7 p.m. Between 5 and 7 p.m., people would converge downtown to stroll freely from the Art Center to Crescendo to places such as Expressions. Any business can change the art on its walls every month, and the art would be for sale. Preferably, businesses and art galleries would feature art from local and regional artists.

♦ Throw a festival for the performing arts in the autumn. Work with the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center and other places downtown. Make it so there are stages for performers outside, inside and even on top. Have one stage where audience members can perform. Go wild. Charge admission. Grab headlines in the metro papers for originality.

♦ Expand the monthly wine tasting at Crescendo so that once a summer it is an event that happens in several downtown venues.

♦ Do something silly. Have dog-racing contests. Have a lightning bug festival. Have hot dog-eating competition. Have a decorated-car contest. Have a Taste of Albert Lea event.

This is the point: Make it so people are so frequently curious about what is happening and hip downtown that they go down there to see what is going on, even when nothing is going on. That is the hallmark of successful downtowns in small and medium-sized cities.

Often, plans for Albert Lea downtown improvements involve heaps of money. But with some creative thinking and a little pocket change, downtown can create a cultural atmosphere, one that prompts development and improves property values.

Downtown merchants and other downtown members need to come together and get something rolling. It will take vision, persistence, convincing and thick skin to get ideas to reach fruition. But once they start, they will bring a return.