The intersection of North and Lisbon Avenues was once bustling. You can see it in the building stock; there was obviously a bank, there was one of the city's most popular Chinese restaurants, a thriving movie palace. But nowadays, it's one of the city's least pedestrian friendly areas, with a freeway entrance and exit, two major streets crossing one another and no small amount of rush hour traffic.

There has been little development in the area in recent years, except for the police department's communications center, which replaced the historic Uptown Theater, although there have been some long-lived businesses nearby, like Judy's Red Hots, an extremely rare indie gas station -- which still survives despite the arrival of a Mobil next door -- and Lisbon Storm, Screen and Door, up the street, to name a few.

In the past two years, however, a new athletic wear store has opened in a new construction and an old, boarded-up retail building -- which used to house the Spartacus socialist bookstore -- across the street, on the south side of North Avenue, got a facelift. Now, signs have appeared in the windows there for a new art-themed coffee shop.

Hopefully these signs point to a new vitality for this depressed intersection, which sees a lot of daily traffic. However, real and successful development won't likely come until something is done about that traffic.

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