Across the street and down a block, you might see Jim McKay doing the same. McKay opened Olive Boutique on June 1 and was appalled at the litter that accumulated on his sidewalk and along the curb each day.

"I've lived in a lot of cities and seen a lot of downtowns," McKay said, "and believe me Salem has a really dirty downtown."

The city used to use high-pressure hoses to wash down the sidewalks each week, but that service ended several years ago. Some merchants complain that the cutback was part of a larger tendency on the part of Salem city government to spend fewer tax dollars downtown.

Carole Smith, chair of the Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization (known as CAN-DO), said the annual downtown parking tax paid by property owners used to allocate $30,000 a year for power washing and another $30,000 for decorative planters and hanging baskets.

"We still pay the tax, but now we get zero services," Smith said.
But Mark Becktel, transportation services manager for the Salem Department of Public Works, said the power washings were discontinued because many older buildings in the downtown district weren't properly sealed where the storefronts met the sidewalk.

"Water was getting in there and weakening the structures," Becktel said. "We couldn't have that."

Besides, Becktel said, the city code states that building occupants are responsible for keeping the sidewalks clean in front of their businesses.

Clearly, some merchants do a better job than others.

Haugen and McKay get gold stars. Haugen often sweeps his side
of the street from the alley off Court Street west to Liberty and all the way up Liberty to Chemeketa.

McKay starts at the alley behind the Reed Opera House building and sweeps the Court Street sidewalk east to Liberty, then south on Liberty to State and west on State to the alley.

Why do they do it?

"Boutique is a destination shop, and I want to make it a pleasant experience for all the people who drive in from the suburbs," McKay said.

But the litter accumulates faster than McKay and Haugen can sweep it up. Much of it comes from cigarette butts -- Haugen's personal bugaboo -- but McKay says he's seen every kind of trash from condoms to empty plastic baggies that might have held drugs to beer cans to toilet paper.

Much of the litter ends up in the gutters, which are the city's responsibility.

Becktel insists the city hasn't cut back on downtown street sweeping. In fact, he said, the service was increased last year.

Every downtown street gets at least one sweeping a week, and "hot spots" get a second sweeping, while the worst areas have been given a third sweeping since last year.

The problem lies with downtown's popularity. The more popular the block, the more litter is likely to accumulate. Coffee shops and restaurants with outdoor tables tend to produce the most litter.

Lesson #2: Downtowns are often noisy
The hustle and bustle of a downtown is far from silent.
Unmuffled motorcycles roar down the streets. Sidewalk musicians play saxophones and drums. Kids yell greetings to friends across four lanes of traffic.

And that's just during the daytime.

At night, when the bars close, belligerent drunks spill into the streets, determined to display their manhood by out-fighting, or at least out- shouting, all comers, and leaving the area with squealing tires, honking horns and full-volume car stereos.
Carole Smith, who lives downtown, thinks noise problems are hurting efforts to attract and keep people living downtown.
She said rental agents won't admit it, but one downtown building has had loft vacancies for months because of the noise problems.

But Salem Police Sgt. Brian Prevett, who heads the downtown enforcement team, said the police don't get many noise complaints from downtown residents or merchants.
In fact, police records indicate that in the past 18 months officers responded to 136 noise disturbance complaints, for an average of less than two a week.

Smith's anti-noise stance led her to oppose an open-air musical event planned for July 4th in the alley behind the Reed Opera House building.

Her opposition highlights the sometimes conflicting agendas of merchants and residents.

"I think it's good to have musical events downtown," said Jim McKay of Olive Boutique. "They bring people downtown who might not otherwise come here, and they see all the nice shops we have. It's good for business."

Emily Cahal, owner of Addictions Body Piercing and Tattoos Inc. at 176 Liberty St. SE and a downtown merchant for the past 12 years, agrees, but understands Smith's point of view, too.

"As a business owner, I think concerts like this one are wonderful. They'll bring a lot of people downtown. But as a resident - and yes, my husband and I do live downtown - I can see how musical events can be an issue, especially if they run too late."

Despite Smith's opposition, Cahal and four other members of the Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization board voted last month to endorse the July 4th event, with only Smith voting to oppose.

Cahal said board members were impressed by the sincerity of the event's organizer, Jeremy Crofoot, who assured them the bands would be finished by 9 p.m. and the alley would be left neat and tidy.

So, apparently, were city officials who granted Crofoot a variance from the city's noise ordinance that will allow him to hold a concert that generates no more than 85 decibels of noise as measured 40 feet from its source. (A concert scheduled for the same day at Riverfront Park will be allowed to crank their sounds up to 100 decibels.)

Crofoot, who has lived downtown, says noise is "just part of the vibrancy of downtown."

"My studio and my business are on that alley, and things can get pretty loud there," he said. "The worst offenders to me are the garbage trucks at 6 a.m. and the bar crowd at 2 a.m.

"But would these things keep me from living downtown? Absolutely not."

Lesson #3: If they're successful, downtowns are crowded
Back in February, Salem changed its downtown parking strategy. The goal was to make more parking spaces available to those who shopped downtown.

The strategy: eliminate unrestricted free parking and replace it with two-hour spaces that would ensure turnover and force all-day parkers to the Parkade lots.

Has it worked?

There's no easy answer yet. Merchants like Alan Haugen, owner of Vernon Jewelers, say they still hear from customers who have been ticketed for exceeding the two-hour limit.

"There's nothing that hurts your business more than having a customer get a parking ticket," Haugen said.

Through mid June, 3,139 tickets were issued for cars exceeding the two-hour limit, or almost 175 tickets a day.

Doug Vande Griend, a lawyer whose offices are downtown, thinks the two-hour limit is a mistake.

"People generally come downtown to do multiple things in one trip," he said. "They may shop at one store, have lunch at a nearby restaurant, then go to the mall and shop at two or three more stores. They make their trip downtown an event, and it often lasts longer than two hours."

The city's plan assumed that shoppers like that -- and those who work downtown -- would shift from onstreet parking to the Parkade lots.

But a recent survey of those lots showed that hasn't happened. Stalls occupied during peak hours at the Chemeketa garage in April of this year were roughly the same as they were in June of last year. And the other downtown lots -- the Liberty and Marion Parkades -- showed significant declines in April when compared with June 2006. Use of the Marion lot was off by 192 cars during one peak hour of operation in the comparison.

"If the workers did move from the street to the Parkades, then we have to conclude that fewer shoppers are coming downtown now,"  Vande Griend said.

If that's true, then the city's strategy has failed.

But Tony Mounts of the city's administrative services department isn't ready to concede defeat.

"The question is whether there are spaces available during the peak business hours so shoppers have a place to park," Mounts said. "When 85 percent or more are filled, as they were last year, motorists get the impression that there are no more spaces. That's what we want to avoid."

He notes that eliminating 171 of the 30-minute spaces has effectively added to the pool of available spaces, and the "vast majority" of the 8,000 people who work downtown weren't parking on the street even before the change.

"Visually, I think you can now go downtown during peak hours and find a place to park, but we're doing a survey to make sure. If the survey confirms it, I'd have to say this year's plan has been a success."