>What Ridgewood can look like in 2025
To the editor:
My wife and I are 42-year residents of the village, and I write in support of the Brogan and the Bolger housing developments. I look back with nostalgia at the Ridgewood of 1969 when we moved here. Who can forget Mr. Still, the Big Store, Sealfon’s and McHugh’s. Having said that, we should live on dreams and not memories. We should look forward and not back.
The days of downtown as a shopping destination are long gone, and in all candor, the place is beginning to look cadaverous with so many empty shops. Ridgewood is in need of forward-looking leadership that will work hard to ensure a vital downtown by attracting residents. Towns like Wellesley, Mass. and Bronxville, N.Y., are of a similar socio-economic level as Ridgewood, but their downtown areas are so much more dynamic. One big difference is that both towns have a higher density of living units in the downtown areas.
