Editorial: Shut the strip clubs down

Years ago, Bostorn tried a "Combat Zone" arrangement where the night clubs and other adult businesses were clustered in one area. It didn't work. Springfield's "Combat Zone" is a magnet for trouble.

Disallowing adult businesses downtown is not the solution. We just shouldn't cram them all in one small area.

Whose bright idea was it to create a "Combat Zone" in Springfield in the first place?

Think it was Mayor Albano. Downtown Springfield was going down the toilet and if I recall, he wanted to put everything in one place to "revitalize" the downtown , similar to Northampton.

But Springfield was going the toilet long before that. It started with the joke known as urban renewal. The only thing that fiasco did was to create half-assed jobs for the "right" people (redevelopment authority) and the lawyers.

The problem, as it emerged in Boston, was that the proximity between lower Washington st. and Chinatown was a bit too close, which probably would have worked, but the streetwalkers started moving and walking into Chinatown.

Chinatown is family oriented, of course, they don't want to see cars cruising, streetwalkers doing business in a family community.

That was the downfall of the so called 'Combat Zone.' The people of Chinatown refused to have their community invaded by streetwalkers, and I don't blame them.

what to do wrote:

Years ago, Bostorn tried a "Combat Zone" arrangement where the night clubs and other adult businesses were clustered in one area. It didn't work. Springfield's "Combat Zone" is a magnet for trouble.
Disallowing adult businesses downtown is not the solution. We just shouldn't cram them all in one small area.
Whose bright idea was it to create a "Combat Zone" in Springfield in the first place?

The Combat zone concept will work, just as long as it is not adjacent to a family neighborhood.

It probably is better to restrict them to one area, but they need to look at specifically what neighbors will be a affected, and don't let streetwalkers fan out from the Zone.

what to do wrote:

Years ago, Bostorn tried a "Combat Zone" arrangement where the night clubs and other adult businesses were clustered in one area. It didn't work. Springfield's "Combat Zone" is a magnet for trouble.
Disallowing adult businesses downtown is not the solution. We just shouldn't cram them all in one small area.
Whose bright idea was it to create a "Combat Zone" in Springfield in the first place?

At bottom, I can only guess.

Without hindsight, it's easy to predict anything, but my prediction would be that even isolated away from residential areas (although in cities there is rental housing in or adjacent to almost every area), the violence will be increased in proportion to the concentration of people in the "zone," especially factoring in the likelihood that some substantial percentage of them will be drinking, and/or high on some drug or other. And another smaller (but still real) percentage of them will be concealing a weapon. It seems to me that as the size of the crowd increases under these conditions in a small space, the chances of a collision (even randomly) of these factors will increase.

But maybe I'm looking at the probabilites all wrong.

It's a tough nut to crack -- how to solve the downtown violence problem.

A tried-and-true way to understand and solve a problem is to "Follow the money."

I didn't say that quite right. Oh well.