Main Street in Las Cruces, N.M., may be opened again.

Byline: Christopher Schurtz

Apr. 18--For more than a century, Las Cruces had its own slice of Americana on Main Street downtown, where you could stop for a soda at the drug store, maybe after shopping at The Popular or the Boston Shoe Store.

Native Las Crucen Irene Oliver-Lewis remembers it as "a bustling avenue" where as a schoolgirl she and her friends would "stop for a Coke on the way home from school at the Rexall Drug Store."

"It was the area of energy. We'd go from the (Mesquite) neighborhood where it was peaceful to Main Street where the commerce was, where the energy was," Oliver-Lewis said.

But by the mid-'60s, as the city grew and businesses popped up outside of downtown, it became full of boarded up buildings. Soon city officials got behind federal urban renewal efforts as a last hope.

"When it started to happen, it was like overnight, the feeling I had blinked my eyes and there was no Main Street," Oliver-Lewis said.

Entire blocks of adobes and businesses were bulldozed for parking lots, a long stretch of Main Street was closed to vehicles, and by 1973, the Downtown Mall, featuring foot traffic only, was opened with hopes high.

It never really worked, and within a few years of it opening, business owners wanted the street opened again.

Three decades later, it may finally happen.

On Monday, the Las Cruces City Council will consider extending Main Street, something it's already discussed as part of a larger revitalization concept plan that includes a new …