Photo by Eric Keith / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Earl Carter, Dennis Russell, Bob Nash and Warren Pigg like to hang out regularly in the food court at the East Hills Shopping Center.

In the good ol’ days, a community never needed to search far to find its heart.

Side streets held their share of business and backyard diversion, but everyone knew where to go for the real action.

In small towns, the destination was Main Street or the square. Cities had downtown.

St. Joseph was easy to classify. Though it wasn’t as large as Kansas City or Omaha, it was a city just the same.

Downtown department stores provided jobs and drew shoppers from surrounding communities. When the work week ended, visitors flocked in for a night on the town. Perhaps it was a show at the City Auditorium, followed by a warm bed at the Hotel Robidoux.

Decades later, St. Joseph’s heart doesn’t beat like it used to. The City Auditorium and Hotel Robidoux are mere memories for older residents. For the young, the two former Downtown fixtures exist only as a little-told back story for a parking lot and a bank.

Now the location of St. Joseph’s heart is up for debate. One side sees a small city with a Downtown that can jump back to life with a few hits from the TIF defibrillator. Others see an overgrown small town pumping its lifeblood through the main artery of the Belt Highway.

Becky Boerkircher, executive director of the St. Joseph Downtown Partnership, took time at a recent town hall meeting to make a case for Downtown revitalization.

“I don’t think people realize how important a downtown is to a city,” Ms. Boerkircher said. “We should be proud of our Downtown. We go to other communities and they’re proud of their downtowns.”

Ray Sisson has spent 50 years in the commercial development field. He told the same crowd that, without fail, major companies ask to see Downtown before they decide to invest in St. Joseph.

“They all look Downtown to see what kind of investment we’re making,” Mr. Sisson said.

While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Downtown lost its place atop the social and business scene, most say the shift in power occurred shortly after construction of the East Hills Shopping Center in the mid-1960s.

The groups that arrive at the mall before the shops open, to walk the halls each morning, are old enough to remember Downtown’s salad days. And from where they sit, the mall has just as much to offer as the old Downtown, if not more. It’s 72 degrees every day, there are no hills to negotiate, and you don’t have to drive around the block three times to find a parking space.

Anyone who says the mall lacks character — a frequent criticism of all shopping centers — hasn’t met the characters that meet for coffee every day. They spend half the morning solving the world’s problems, using the other half to blame one another for those same problems.

Bob Nash meets Earl Carter, Dennis Russell, Warren Pigg and other friends every day in the food court in front of Lino’s. The conversation doesn’t differ a bit from what you’d hear in coffee shops across the country.

“There’s four types of people that come to this mall: walkers, talkers, gawkers and stalkers,” Mr. Nash said. “We’re the talkers.”

Darrell Knetzer and his wife, Donna, meet their friends to walk the mall and drink coffee in front of Taco Johns.

“We have good people here, except him,” Mr. Knetzer joked, pointing to his friend, Jerry Acord. “He’s an interloper. He comes over from Wathena and uses our parks and schools and streets and chases our women. He doesn’t pay a lick of taxes in this city, either.”

The mall brings people together. It creates jobs. And like Downtown did, it elicits an emotional response from the people who spend a significant amount of their time there. For at least one group, it’s every bit the heart of St. Joseph as Downtown was.

“If I had to crawl up here on my hands and knees, I’d be up here,” Mr. Carter said.

A TIF plan has shown signs of sprucing up the mall, though the economy has put the brakes on expected retail growth.

Downtown business owners hope a similar idea can do the same for them. Nathan Karr told TIF critics last week he sees a good future for Downtown.

“Downtown is not dying,” he said. “It’s going the other way.”

Clinton Thomas can be reached at clintonthomas@npgco.com.