I am dismayed and angry about the negative portrayal Mark Klaas created in his dreary article titled, “Struggles persist on Main Street” (Auburn Reporter, Feb. 26).

Your generalization casts a negative light on our community and its businesses … when you clearly did not look too far to see if there was another perspective.

Why did you not come into my business to ask me about how things are going? My business is thriving. I opened my Pilates Studio at 205 E. Main Street in June of 2008. Since then my business has continued to grow.

There are positive things happening in our community. You neglected to mention the positive changes that are so obvious. You have chosen instead to see the glass half empty. If we continue with that view, things certainly are not going to get any better.

Let me point out a few things that you missed:

What about the makeover of the Arcade next to Rottles and 20/20 Vision? Have you seen how nice that looks now? What about the beautiful new Plaza One building and the offices and business that are going in there? What about the block the hospital is in and the expansion they have done? What about the Main Street businesses that work creatively and provide services that draw people here to the downtown?

There are successful and thriving businesses here. My business brings people consistently every week into downtown. These people go across the street to shop at Rottles, they go next door to Comstock’s for books, and they go down the street to get their jewelry repaired at Nelson’s.

What about the positive changes the Auburn Downtown Association has made in hiring a new executive director named Kathleen Keator?

Kathleen and the ADA have put together a new Web site, and they are creating print materials that support and promote our downtown Auburn businesses. She is actively working to recruit new businesses and restaurants to locate here. We will be cleaning up the downtown and maintaining it that way, to make it a place people want to come to and can be proud of. As it should be. But we all have to work together to make this happen.

To quote your negative statement in the article – “perhaps Auburn’s dysfunctional and bickering Auburn Downtown Association can come to a consensus and find new ways to generate business” – you have already missed the boat, my friend. While you are focusing energy into writing a negative portrayal of our city and its downtown, there are things happening to make it better.

If you had been in attendance at the open house for the new One Main Street Professional Center last week, you would have heard and seen for yourself the positive changes that already have been made and the plans for better things to come.

I am not an inexperienced new business owner. My husband and I have lived and worked in Auburn for the past 30 years. We have been self-employed for as many years and know well the value of hard work. We have raised our family here. We have participated in our community and volunteered for causes we supported: sports for youth, the food bank, the Miss Auburn Program, local politics. We know well and work closely with other people who also love and support this community.

Our focus is to work for the good of the whole, to serve our community in the capacity we are able to, to do the best we can every day, in the hope that working together we can make life better for us all.

There is no one you interviewed in your article who knows better than my family the repercussions of this current economy and the challenges it has created. My husband has worked in Mortgage lending for the past 20 years. My family has experienced first hand the effects of this downturn. Our focus has been to join together, to work harder, to use every bit of our creativity, to remain positive, and to persevere.

This is the year of creativity. We have held fast to our beliefs that if something better is to come, it is up to us to make it happen. We have had to open our minds and open our hearts to come up with new and different ways of doing things to succeed.

I challenge you to take another look at what is really happening on Main Street in Auburn. I welcome all of your readers to come down and see for themselves the positive changes. I challenge all of you to step outside of your old view of what you have always seen here and to look for something new, something better. If you look with different eyes, you may just be able to see it

– Ruth Stover, owner, Corestar Pilates