Early in my marriage, my wife and I invited my parents in Fort Wayne to visit us in the small house we rented in Wabash. We cleaned and straightened for a week, shopped and cooked. All during the day, my mother dropped small words of praise here and there, as mothers will. My father was silent. When the visit was over, and they were leaving, I finally just asked him: "Well, how was it?" He thought for a long moment and finally said, "The coffee could have been stronger." I am my father's son, so I make coffee so strong that most of my family won't drink it. Sometimes my sister will pour two-thirds of a cup of it and pointedly dilute it with water.
All of which is to say, hooray! A Starbucks is going in at Fairfield and Jefferson, just a few blocks from work. It's about the only place that makes coffee almost strong enough for me. It will transform an eyesore, the former Firestone building and, I think, be a sparkplug for downtown development. Starbucks is one of those "build it and they will come" kind of places that doesn't just benefit from traffic; it creates traffic. The company's plan, though, does show faith in downtown, and it's the kind of investment city planners have been counting on.
