Prof. Eric Stark’s idea for downtown Lewiston is a good one. Assemble his architecture students (Stark teaches architecture at the University of Maine in Augusta) and have them draft innovative, groundbreaking plans for remaking the city’s signature neighborhood.

It makes sense for academic and practical ends. Downtown is ready for redevelopment, and there’s no dearth of possibilities for remaking its image. In fact, it’s one of our favorite pastimes. (Our latest brilliant notion would be turning Pine Street’s one-way around, as to create a stirring new streetscape to enter downtown.)

Yet there always seems to be a good amount of hand-wringing and hesitancy about drastic ideas for downtown. Some emerged after Stark’s students presented their plans, with concerns raised about property rights and ordinance compliance from their proposals. Our response?

So what.

One thing downtown Lewiston symbolizes is the fleeting nature of ownership. Bates, the long-standing landlord of the brick-lined district, remains in name only. At one time, imagining a neighborhood without its influence was, well, unimaginable. Development plans cannot always be drafted to please the needs of current land owners, since ownership does not last forever.

And ordinances are usually reactionary, rather than progressive. Making long-term decisions cannot be restricted by choices made to solve past problems. A signature example of this is Lewiston’s ordinance against the clustering of establishments with liquor licenses.

A generation ago, this ordinance was passed to break up the bar scene on Lower Lisbon Street, at the time a headache for law enforcement and community pride. Now this ordinance arguably hinders the creation of a sought-after entertainment district, ala Portland’s Old Port.

Ordinances are not carved into stone tablets, and therefore shouldn’t stifle innovation.

What the UMA students were tasked with doing is re-imagining downtown without restriction. What they’ve produced so far are valuable for their fresh perspective. Their ideas are neither right nor wrong, good nor bad. They are merely the latest entries into the public comment box about downtown.

A box, it must be noted, that’s open to everyone. We have ideas, like Pine Street. The litany of proposals for Bates Mill No. 5, either as a building or site, could rival War and Peace. All this envisioning is merely recognition that downtown Lewiston is ripe for the imagination.

So how should we go about it? By playing by rules that could change in a blink, like ownership and ordinance, or by letting the mind wander without hindrance? Downtown needs the latter.

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