Driving down Broad Street, a visitor might at first get the impression that New Castle is a quaint, clean little town. They’ll pass the jeweler, the tuxedo shop, Primo Steakhouse, the town plaza, and the courthouse and marvel at the town’s diversity of businesses. That’s how the city wants newcomers to see the downtown: a tidy, orderly place to live. However, the illusion falls apart if the visitors cross the train tracks.
Every local knows the tracks, implicitly or explicitly. The tracks between the town plaza and Goodyear Tires are a dividing line between well-kept and defunct businesses, between the pawn shops and the fancy stores. Unfortunately, New Castle has come to embody the idiom, “the other side of the tracks,” concerningly well.
The tracks are only the starting point; the area between Main Street and 15th Street currently serves as a metaphorical wall. A simple aerial view on Google Maps shows the sheer dropoff of businesses from one side to the other, with a label heralding “Primo” being the last for another two streets over before labels start popping up again but this time to the tune of “Christian Love Help Center” and “God’s Grain Bin.”
These charities are necessary, of course; it’s the absence of established businesses past 15th Street which is the glaring issue. New Castle’s government needs to promote growth in that area of town instead of abandoning it in the hopes that some independent start-up will be its savior. Focus the town’s resources on the neighborhoods that need them most, and prioritize filling the area beyond 15th Street, not just State Road 3, with new and thriving businesses. Our community cannot continue to focus on improving the well-established areas of New Castle and leaving the others behind.
