Photo: The iconic clock in front of Falkenberg’s Jewelers and the Reynolds-Day Building. Photo courtesy of Steph Forrer.

By Kathryn Witherington, Outgoing Executive Director, Downtown Walla Walla Foundation

I moved to Walla Walla in 2015 sight unseen, and at the time I knew just a handful of things about the town. Its onions were famous, its wine was good, and my friend who had gone to Whitman in the 1990s told me, “The college is cool, but the rest of the town is a little sleepy.” We arrived in town late at night and pulled off the highway into what, indeed, felt like a sleepy little rural town.

Five blocks later, we hit Main Street, and everything changed. The shopfronts twinkled with lights. The historic buildings rose overhead. Immediately, I felt like I was somewhere special.

Cyclists race past the historic Liberty Theater in downtown Walla Walla. Photo courtesy of Visit Walla Walla.

Downtown Walla Walla’s story is similar to other Main Streets—an emptying-out in the 1970s and ’80s led to a 40-year revitalization effort. Today, we have a thriving downtown, full of shops, restaurants, and wineries. By many markers, our downtown is a success.

But that success didn’t happen on its own. Over 40 years, a community of people came together at different times and with different expertise, breathing life back into the downtown core. We were aided, almost beat for beat, by the rise of the wine industry in the region. In 1984, the year the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation was formed, the region was also designated as an American Viticulture Area. In 2001, when we won our Great American Main Street Award, Walla Walla Valley was truly coming in to its own as a wine region. And in 2020, as the devastating pandemic shuttered our world, we all rallied together to support our small local businesses in any way we could.

Visitors enjoy the outdoor seating at Andrae’s Kitchen Mercado on Main Street. Photo courtesy of Steph Forrer.
Families eat their Bright’s Candies sweet treats in the beautiful sidewalk seating. Photo courtesy of the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation.

Visitors today will see the marks of the pandemic, even if they don’t realize it. In partnership with our city, we significantly expanded outdoor dining with a variety of streateries. We closed down an entire street to serve as a public plaza. And a funny thing happened: our community loved these new spaces so much that we kept them. Today, Walawála Plaza sits at the corner of 1st and Main—a public street dedicated not to car storage but to gathering, the beating heart of a thriving community.

The pandemic-born Walawála Plaza at 1st and Main in downtown Walla Walla. Photo courtesy of Visit Walla Walla.

The important part of this history is that it didn’t happen alone. Every step in our success involved partnerships, friendships, and community building. It also involved a certain amount of luck. I don’t know if Walla Walla’s downtown would be thriving today if the rise of the wine industry (also fostered by partnerships and friendships) hadn’t come along at the same time.

And now, 40 years in, we find ourselves at a different crossroads. We have revitalized. Now what? The successes we’ve had have also brought challenges. Some of our local community feels alienated from downtown. The history we have preserved and highlighted has been largely focused on white settlement, rather than the myriad of other peoples who have lived in this valley. Local businesses can’t always afford to have a storefront downtown.

There is a lot of work still to be done, some of which entails correcting the mistakes we’ve made in the past. And we will no doubt make more mistakes in the future. The path forward may not be clear, but we still know how to walk it—together, in partnership, friendship, and community.