Live From The Trenches…Downtown Topeka

Downtown Topeka has always been my favorite area of town. I was born in Topeka, grew up here, and got my degree from Washburn University. I grew up with you, your children, and your grand children. When I was 22 years old, I took all the lessons and gifts that Topeka taught me and, with very little means, decided to put everything on the line and start a business, Field Of Greens, in Downtown Topeka. It has been nearly 10 years since I started dreaming that if I built it, they would come… Luckily they did!

My business has changed a lot since then. It has brought my whole family together and become something that we all take pride and ownership of. Slowly but surely, after many baby sized steps forward and a few giant leaps back, we opened The Break Room in 2006, right next door. If you knew all I went through to get where I was; the many years of waking up and going to work without ever getting a pay check, living for free in the spare bedroom at my brother’s house (Thanks Frank!) and working part time jobs (in retail and as a DJ), you might have screamed “WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!” The answer is simple and I learned it from the people who pioneered our city. Those who spent years constructing the majestic buildings in our downtown. These people didn’t just slap up a building in three months in an over crowded business district with the sole idea of getting as much money as possible without caring who they stepped on. They had a sense of community, they didn’t just construct buildings, they built legacies. They put everything on the line and took a risk in order to make their community a better place for their families, friends and neighbors for generations to come. We must never forget what they have done for us and we must learn from their sacrifices and successes. It’s a simple and universal thing that most good parents teach us as children… We must respect our elders!

I purchased the Tinkham Veale Building , which houses both of our restaurants, in 2008. Since then, I moved in to one of the apartments in the building, and I have to say that I love it! Yes… I started with nothing more than a dream and struggled for years in Downtown Topeka, and after all that, I moved in to the neighborhood and I just said that I LOVE IT! I must be crazy, right? Guess what else is going to sound crazy? I don’t feel like downtown is an unsafe neighborhood and I don’t really think that our parking situation is that bad either. I have begun to take a little personal offense to negative comments that people make about these items because they are generally made by the ignorant. Pardon me if your complaints are legit, but when most of the people who are scared for downtown safety at night find out that I live here, they verbalize their serious concerns for safety, even though they have never been down here at night to truly know what they are talking about. Criminals go where the money is, and thanks to the people spreading rumors about how “unsafe” downtown is at night, the criminals go elsewhere… Unfortunately, so does everyone else… So if you catch yourself spreading unwarranted fear about downtown when you haven’t been down here for more than 10 minutes at night in the last 10 years, please stop and think about how you are standing in the way of a potentially revitalized area.

I don’t even want to talk about parking, but I will. So many people want our downtown to be exactly like Mass Street in Lawrence… But they never seem to remember all the parking meters that line the street there when they complain about potentially having to pay for parking in Downtown Topeka. Those people also forget that Mass Street does not have to provide parking for 30,000+ employees that work there every day, and that Lawrence is certainly not as blessed to have the kind of booming daytime business district that Downtown Topeka has. They also seem to forget that you rarely get to park right in front of the business that drew you to their neighborhood that day. When people visit Lawrence, they don’t mind walking. Guess what? Walking is good for us and it allows us to see and explore busineses and things we might not have known about, like the multiple new parking garages that have sprung up in downtown Topeka in the last few years.

Downtown Topeka is most likely to be the area where your neighbor, Joe Topekan, will take a chance on his dream of owning a restaurant or a gift store. It’s the place where people who visit Topeka from other states are destined to end up at least once during their visit to our city. It’s the place where Topeka’s original flare on life should be highlighted and supported. It’s the place we should be the most proud of in our city; where the residents of the whole state of Kansas, like it or not, just spent nearly $300 million on improvements to their capitol. Let’s assure them that we were worth the investment and that we appreciate their substantial investment in our community’s infrastructure and job market. As we approach the idea of a vibrant downtown, please try to remember that the arms and legs of our city (north, south, east, and of course west) will all eventually die if the heart of the city stops beating. Our Downtown doesn’t need us to spend money unreasonably, it needs us to formulate the best possible plan and execute it in order to save it from the destruction of time that we have already allowed to take such a toll. When we manage this, we will have successfully given future generations of Topekans a reason to respect their elders. I’m Chris Schultz and I LOVE DOWNTOWN TOPEKA! Won’t you join me?

Originally posted on Chris’s Facebook profile; reposted here with his permission.