For a city that dragged its feet for years when deciding to build a new mall, Ames seems awfully eager for expansion.

Perhaps the City Council ought to re-examine a few of its priorities, and ensure it can take care of what it already has before it begins looking at expanding.

Firstly, while I hate to bring up the whole mall business, we’ve all been to North Grand – it barely qualifies as a mall at all. Not only that, but it now appears as though Ankeny is not going to get a mall, and building trends in Des Moines show a marked trend for construction of malls further to the south and west. Granted, North Grand’s owners have a $30 million redevelopment plan in the works, but let’s not hold our breath.

Then there are the streets. The furor over fixing the intersection of 13th Street and Grand Avenue is a perfect example of what kinds of attitudes need to be adjusted in this town. A street needing widened, adjusted or fixed shouldn’t even be an issue, and it wouldn’t be in any other city or town. A little intestinal fortitude would go a long way in fixing many of these situations, but sadly the City Council seems to be unwilling to bite the bullet and upset anyone. There seems, however, to be no such concerns regarding the corn stalks they intend to develop on the north and west edges of this expanding town.

As far as the streets and city systems go, there’s also the small matter of maintenance. Hardly anyone can argue that the city of Ames has a hard time caring for its streets as it is now. Mind you, it has been a rougher winter than most, but even in milder years Ames has had serious issues with street clearing and winter road maintenance, whether they’ll admit it or not. Many small towns across this state own perhaps one snowplow and might possibly have one trained person to operate it, and yet have vastly superior snow removal services. How much improvement can really be expected with additional road mileage?

While it would be foolish to pretend to know more about the local housing market than some of the businessmen who spoke up at last Tuesday’s meeting, there is also no denying that, nationwide, this is a pretty bad time to be putting up residential developments. With everyone from Ben Bernanke to Jim Cramer to President Bush finally admitting that a bona fide recession may, in fact, be upon us, is the city really prepared for the possibility of an undeveloped expansion project or a development that may sit idle for several years? With the housing market in what might charitably be referred to as a “slump” and a massive credit crunch rippling across the economy, the feasibility of any major developments may come into serious question.

What, also, of Main Street?

Ames seems to have this fanatical obsession with trying to “save” its downtown business district, but what good do developments on the northern and western extremes of the city do for them? A person living out near Ontario and Dakota or north of 13th Street is much more inclined to completely avoid the hassle of trying to get around downtown (who laid this city out, anyway?!) and shop at the Wal-Mart on North Grand, one of the various Kum & Gos, or one of the other non-local chain stores whose locations cater to those geographies.

What, then, is an appropriate method of growth for a city that, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, grew nearly 6 percent in population in the first three years of this decade?

Assume, for the moment, that those census figures aren’t skewed by the student population. If Ames is really growing at an average 2 percent per annum, that’s more than 1,000 new faces per year. That growth rate, however, has to be adjusted for the statewide population growth rate which, once again according to the Census Bureau, will turn into a negative at some point within the next 20 to 30 years.

In short, rather than spending their time on expansion projects and new development, the city of Ames really ought to examine, maintain, and improve upon what they already have. Ames is already a big place, and the city would do well to attempt bring even a speck of acceptable service to the existing parts of the city.

– Ryan Frederick is a senior in management from Orient.