"A band-aid is better than nothing" Can a big donor non-profit organization rescue downtown?

The Downtown Mall, Water Street, photo by Anita Byers.

As the Daily Progress recently reported, the Downtown Business Association has been "absorbed and replaced" by a new donor-funded non-profit called the Friends of Cville, which just kicked off their formation by partially wrapping the rat-infested shell of an unfinished hotel project that has been a blight on the Downtown Mall for nearly 14 years with a music-themed vinyl mural, an idea the Bridge Progressive Art Initiative's Matthew Slaats actually proposed in 2014, which would have given local artists the opportunity to participate in a creative/public project. Friends of Cville chose to use the work of a Canadian "pop fusion" artist named Eric Waugh, who, according to his website, has created 45,000 original works of art around the world. Coincidentally, that's how much the Friends paid for the mural - $45,000.

Over the years, the City had tried to designate the Downtown Mall as a Business Improvement District (BID), much lik…