---

The five storefronts on the first floor of the old Briggs Hotel on South Main Street, Attleboro - odd numbers 27 through 37 - are all empty.

So is the storefront on the opposite side at 4 South Main St.

So is the large storefront on the corner of South Main and Park Street.

Likewise for the storefront next door to it.

Further down the block, at 13 and 15 Park St., you will find two more storefronts looking forlorn and empty. In other words, vacant. And we're not done yet.

The former home of New England Home Theater on Park Street, which combined two fronts into one, is empty.

Likewise for the former New England House of Beauty at 59 Park St.

And so for the former Nextel store next door.

Coming back up the other side of Park Street, you'll find the former home of Omar's Village Cafe and of the Paul Mitchell Hair Salon next door also to be vacant.

As for the former home of the Arc, on the Bank Street side of the same building, it too is vacant.

And further down the block, the four storefronts upstairs from the old Jarod's Nightclub - formerly known as Capt. Pete's and the Downunder, and well-remembered by oldtimers as Willy's Bowling Alley - are, you guessed it, vacant.

That's what I found on a walk around downtown that I took once my feet came back to the ground after Boston Magazine's designation of Attleboro as a great place to live and a smart place to invest in real estate.

"A city on the cusp," we said in a front page headline above a followup to the Boston piece. By my count, that cusp is 20 vacant storefronts wide.

Let's not exaggerate - either over or under - the extent of the vacant storefront problem. Attleboro's retail sector remains healthy, but it is now mainly in South Attleboro, not downtown. Meantime, the downtown area continues to sustain a lot of activity related to City Hall, the YMCA, public library, dance and martial arts academies, not to mention banking, insurance and other service businesses.

But the downtown area is also the face of the city. And right now, with those 20 vacant storefronts, it has a rather forlorn look about it.

The problem is not new, but dates at least to the opening of Emerald Square in North Attleboro two decades ago. When I took the same vacancy census a year or two ago, I came up with 18. The difference of two between now and then is virtually meaningless.

But remembering the old saw, "strike while the iron is hot," now appears to be a good time to try to do something about the vacancies. The Boston piece, and the facts it is based on, represent a valuable marketing tool. Yes, an urban renewal plan is moving along, as is the Industrial Business Park. Attleboro is on that cusp - the edge of something very good - and businesses ought to be encouraged to move into the downtown area.

We're told that members of Friends of Attleboro Interested in Revitalization have broached the subject of the empty storefronts with Mayor Kevin Dumas. As a few of his predecessors did, he has every right to point out that the city is not in the real estate business. At the same time, taxpayers are spending some small share of their local bill on supporting economic development efforts. They have every right to expect that some of those efforts be devoted to bringing some life back to the storefronts of the center city.

MARK FLANAGAN is Opinion Page editor of The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0335 or by e-mail to mflanagan@thesunchronicle.com.