Interested in the reaction to the Columbia Avenue crime story last week, particularly the folks who said - hey, I live near there, and it isn’t that bad.

So do I. And yes it is.

All of the following photos were shot by our photographer Jeff Ruppenthal last week for the story; one got used, but the other ones also tell the story. All of them are contained within a one-mile strip between Stone Mill Road and Good Drive.

This pic doesn’t show the entirety of the rusted old building out in front of Boas, but you can get a sense of it. It’s in a flood zone, I’ll be surprised if there are any bidders for it. Meanwhile, it’s just slowly atrophying - and right across the street from that burned-out mill, too. At leas some work is going on there, verrrry slowly. All in all, however, it’s the kind of thing you see in a place like Detroit, rather than Lancaster County. Which is kind of the point.

Here, you’d like to think the previous tenant would have taken the lettering down off the sign. No such luck. The place is actually less overgrown than it was earlier this summer; this is the former Lanvina building. Been vacant for a year or more, I’d say.

This one, as you can see, is near the Dairy Queen, on the East Hempfield side of the road. Far as I can tell no one lives here - I hope not, for it’s obviously structurally unsound. Been this way long as I can remember.

This one did run with the story. Note the charming peeling paint; what the photo doesn’t show is the hollowed-out sign along Columbia Avenue itself. The weeds sprouting through in the parking lot.

In addition to these four places, there are a significant number of businesses along the road where the parking lot/drives are cracked and cratered. Quite a few auto repair shops, in some cases with broken-down cars sitting right alongside the road.

At the same time, sure, there are quite a few thriving businesses along the corridor. But think of the other corridors out of the city - Fruitville or Lititz or Oregon Pike, for example. Is there blight to this degree along those roads?

And the answer is no, because this strip along Columbia Avenue is what planners call the “inner ring” suburbs. These were among the first suburbs in Lancaster County; Columbia Avenue was one of the first commercial strips built here. The original “sprawl.” And now it’s simply showing its age, as the inner ring suburbs do.

At one point I was going to write a big news article on the inner ring, but the topic is far more complex here than it is in the big cities where the “inner ring” can comprise entire counties. Because here it jumps municipal lines - and the Columbia Avenue corridor is a good example. The Papa John’s/CVS side of the road is Manor Township; Manor is a largely rural community, this strip and Millersville are the two “urbanized” areas within the township; the Wheatland Shopping Center side is East Hempfield Township, less affluent than much of the township. Split down the middle, atypical of their respective municipalities on the whole, there is and can be no coherent policy approach to tackling the issues common to these areas - crime and blight being two of them. Educational underachievment being another.

Consider: Take a guess at which Manheim Township elementary school has the greatest percentage of subsidized school lunches. Consider that that school is squarely in the inner ring. This is how it works.

The homes in the inner ring are older and smaller than the typical suburban McMansions that now dominate suburbia. They cost less; and attract a younger, less affluent, more diverse group of residents. Some of the homes wind up being rented out. The schools see more needy kids. And they’re built out - newer development passes them by.

Some local officials are keenly aware of this and are talking about it. The Lancaster County Planning Commission and Hempfield School District, to name two, are cognizant of this trend and how it’s impacting the community. But other municipal officials I called hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was talking about. One in particular, whom I won’t name, told me no, they hadn’t seen anything like that in their community, we don’t have those problems - when I know for a fact that many of the neighborhoods in that community fit the profile to a tee. But it’s just not something they’ve considered.

So the prediction is, the crime that we’ve seen along Columbia Avenue is probably going to continue - not at this pace, hopefully, but the long-term trends make it inevitable. People need to recognize those long-term trends - after all, realizing there’s a problem is the necessary first step toward doing something about it.