Anyone who thinks revitalizing downtown Tooele is a distant dream would have been astonished to drive down the south end of Main Street on a sunny Halloween afternoon last week. Both sides of the street were alive with throngs of people -- children in costumes and their parents popping in and out of local businesses during the city's annual downtown trick-or-treat event. Friends and neighbors bumped into each other and people browsed the shops. For a few beautiful hours the Wal-Mart parking lot was only half-full. It was a vision of Tooele 60 years ago -- and a glimpse into a possible future.

The first question the city and local merchants should be asking themselves is this: If hundreds of people will come downtown to trick-or-treat, what else will they come downtown for? Many cities have reintroduced residents to forgotten downtowns through events such as gallery walks, which allow adults to view different arts and sample foods by walking between businesses. The businesses don't need to be art galleries per se, and often aren't. Local merchants who agree to host performers or traveling art collections like the one currently on exhibit at City Hall could fit the bill just as well.

What about closing off the road a couple of times a year for a carnival, a free public movie or a three-on-three basketball tournament? Why not use Veteran's Memorial Park to host part of the Tooele City Arts Festival? Whether these exact ideas are feasible or not isn't the point. The point is downtown Tooele should be staging a major event almost every month of the year, and preparing itself to tap that human energy once it arrives.

Sure, downtown still needs improvements. We all want the vacant stores spruced up and filled with viable businesses. We could use restaurants, cafes, clothing stores and bookshops -- the kind of establishments that cause people to linger in other cities. Tooele City, downtown landlords, and area merchants will have to work together to make this part happen. But any urban planner would have been more heartened by what he saw last week than by the arrival of any new business: people wanting to come downtown because that was where everybody was.