In mid-1987, my wife Vertis and I finished the groundwork to develop recent purchases of El Dorado's downtown real estate. Over several years we had acquired most of the property in the 100 block of Jefferson-Main Street, and had cleared the burned-out shell of an old department store. The space was being used as a parking lot.

We were in Santa Fe, N.M., where our daughter was living at the time. Santa Fe has a great downtown, and we have copied several ideas that have been successful there. We realized you can't re-invent the wheel when trying to add to a downtown. If it's working, someone, somewhere, has already added it.

Here are two ideas we acquired from Santa Fe:

"Off the Rails" is an antique rail car breakfast-lunch place in the heart of our downtown. Santa Fe had gutted an antique train caboose and made it into a welcome center. When we returned home, I got on the Internet, and in about 15........

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