To the City Council,
I am Mike Haines, and I am the 3rd generation owner of The Diamond Shop. I have chosen to build our family business in downtown Lewiston because it see it as an asset to our community. I could have chosen to be anywhere else. I want to stay in downtown, and to do that, we need to upgrade the infrastructure. I have been waiting for more than 20 years to upgrade the storefront of our building, but have not been able to do so because the City keeps promising they will fix the underground problems and then put it all back together. How much long will you force us to hold off? And we can’t afford to put in our new storefront and then have the streets torn up again when the next project happens. We’ve been here for 100 years, but doing multiple projects will kill us. We have to do ONE project, tear up the street once and get it over with. We can survive that, not many times.
The second reason that I support this project is because when we put it back together, it will be amazing, and such a draw. Finally, downtown will be a place to go. It will be a community for everyone, increase tourism, bring revenue for hotels and the airport, and be a center for activity. No one goes to towns like Nashville or Walla Walla because they just want to hang out. They go because of the thriving downtown. We need that. Our family has been committed to staying in downtown for 100 years because we believe in our community. Don’t let us down now. Please do this project and do it all at once so we can get on with making downtown the best place it can possibly be. Thank you!
