New life for the old Wal-Mart site?

We read in this morning’s Oshkosh Northwestern that the former Wal-Mart will soon be demolished, as may the adjacent strip mall because, according to the article, “the Oshkosh market has a glut of small retail space.” It is the hope of those working closely with the impending demolition and marketing the site, that restoring it to a green site will attract more commercial interest than has been shown in the four years or so that the site has sat vacant. We hope so, too.

There are far too empty boxes in the city, including, besides this area, the one on Witzel Avenue at the site of the former Cub Foods across from the city garage. The university has taken over the parking lot for student parking. How does that affect the possibility of any commercial tenant moving into or even being interested in the space? At least someone is making some good use from at least part of the land, but since there doesn’t seem to be a commercial tenant in the building’s future, why doesn’t the university buy the building as well? Then it can either demolish it and use it for even more parking or find another use for the building altogether. In a perfect world, we’d have nothing but taxable entities at all of our now vacant sites. But if that’s not possible, we at least need to find some use for them, rather than letting them languish as is the case in far too many places.

Bottom line: We need to start cleaning up the empty boxes in town and putting something useful – and ideally, taxable - in the place of these eyesores. Maybe razing the old buildings and going back to square one as will soon be done in Aviation Plaza is a start.