The latest e-mail newsletter from downtown Clayton notes that a business is rehabbing an old house on Main Street. The idea makes us a bit anxious.

Our fear is that the farther people live from downtown, the less often they will go there and spend their money at shops and restaurants. Downtowns benefit consistently when they are within walking distance; they suffer when people have to get in their cars and then have to find a place to park.

It’s true that a lot of people still live within walking distance of, say, downtown Smithfield. But it’s true also that businesses and county government now occupy many houses that used to be homes to families. Not surprisingly, downtown Smithfield is no longer home to grocery stores and department stores. Perhaps that was destined to be the case, but we have to think that downtown Smithfield would have, at least, a convenience store of sorts if more people lived closer by.

When asked about a home becoming a business, a Clayton official, in an e-mail, expressed some reservation. But he also noted that business is more financially able to afford the cost of some of Clayton’s bigger fixer-uppers. In other words, what is a town supposed to do? Let a business renovate a house or let the house rot? The former adds to the tax base; the latter takes away from it. So the answer becomes easy.

Still, it’s good for folks to live in downtown or close to it, our Clayton friend said. He just happens to think the key to success lies in new, denser housing, like the condominiums proposed over storefronts on a vacant parking lot downtown.

That project has been shelved for now because of the housing bust and the credit crunch. It might still come to fruition one day. We hope it does, for downtown’s sake.