New Hope X-Heart
There has been a lot of hand-wringing in town recently about Frenchtown becoming another New Hope. This paranoid fear of success pops up in conversations in public and private forums all the time. Some residents are afraid of the traffic and noise that will follow if our little town gets past it’s “Secret on the Delaware” stage. They are afraid of crowded streets and tourists. These people seem to hate New Hope, and think Frenchtown is doomed.
Frenchtown NJ is already like New Hope PA. I have lived here for 10 years now, and the comparison is always in my mind as I walk around the town. Frenchtown is an art community. In some ways, it is more of an art community than New Hope is today. New Hope is still living off of it’s history, it’s glory days when visual and performing arts dominated the local scene there in the 1950′s and 60′s. These glory days of a community full of artists working and struggling in a small rural village are happening in Frenchtown as we speak. Today fashion and real estate speculation and inflation have made New Hope a Disney-fied version of what it once was.
Frenchtown, New Jersey is now at a point that New Hope must have been at some point in it’s illustrious history. The forces of fashion, and real estate speculation have already moved in here. My wonderful little hometown now has choices to make.
Will it choose indiscriminate, easy money and bad development, or will it choose a harder but more meaningful course that will heighten the villages strengths of incredible natural beauty and the arts. It seems to me that I should not be the only one in town talking about a visual and performing arts and history center. If we cannot put down a keystone carved in marble or limestone saying who we are as Frenchtownians, this opportunity could be lost forever, because tomorrow someone will propose a parking lot.
Frenchtown New Jersey must embrace it’s history, it’s unique character as an art community, and it’s potential for growth, change, and commercial development.
I am not afraid of Frenchtown becoming more like New Hope Pennsylvania. I know we can be a better New Hope than New Hope currently is, but only if enough people care enough to care. (Care = Action) If Frenchtown can institutionalize the arts NOW, and preserve green space and farms all around it in every direction, and envision a slightly larger borough of Frenchtown with more citizens, and preserve it’s character, it will be a better New Hope than New Hope.
This post was inspired by someone who is very, very afraid of Frenchtown NJ becoming New Hope PA. See his rant here. (Just Click)Â Please note, Alan, like myself, often changes his articles after he writes them as he did with this one. He does make fun of my blogging here though.
