Cairo inventory

Talk about a depressing assignment.

Southern Illinois University architecture professor Bob Swenson will be sending some of his students to Cairo, Ill., with digital cameras. Their charge? To detail the vacant building inventory of the downtrodden town.

Students will also fill out forms, which will become part of an online inventory so interested developers can immediately see what's available.

It's a noteworthy task, and we hope one day it will become useful.

It could be argued that Cairo has nowhere to go but up. It's being compared to New Orleans' Ninth Ward, which was decimated by Hurricane Katrina. But for so long, so many buildings along Commercial Street in Cairo have been empty. And so far no one has seen the value in restoring them.

What will it take for a Cairo turnaround? Too many things to mention here, but a great start would be the fruition of a large industrial project such as the much-discussed coal plant that could bring 1,000 jobs to the area. It's likely that even a break such as that won't by itself lead to a commercial-district revitalization. It'll take leadership and planning to turn rubble into retail.

We hope Cairo begins an economic transformation soon. We hope that a developer will one day not long from now see the value in making a large investment in the historic district and revive it and make large sums of money in the process. An inventory could be useful to make that happen.