"The trouble with Oakland," wrote Gertrude Stein, "is that when you get there, there isn’t any there there."

The trouble with Oneonta is that there really is a "there" here, but it’s not terribly easy to find at night or on weekends.

At least that seemed to be the sentiment of several visitors we talked to for a story that appeared in The Daily Star’s Weekend edition.

"I’m impressed by this Main Street," said one person in downtown Oneonta who opined that it has something many upstate New York cities don’t have _ a nice, walk-able downtown.

But many of the stores in that nice, walk-able downtown were closed on a recent Sunday.

With the current boom in summertime tourists drawn by local baseball camps, it’s all the more imperative that Oneonta put on its best face.

Closed restaurants and vacant storefronts aren’t conducive to people going back home and recommending this area to their friends.

One person we spoke to was disappointed that there wasn’t a store totally devoted to baseball paraphernalia.

You can’t swing a Louisville Slugger on Main Street in Cooperstown without seeing a baseball store, so why hasn’t an enterprising entrepreneur opened one here?

Perhaps it’s the fear that once the snows come and the baseball camps close, business would be terrible.

That’s a pretty reasonable fear, but not an insurmountable problem.

Included in the city’s relatively useless Comprehensive Plan is the very good idea of re-creating an Oneonta Chamber of Commerce.

With the somnolent Otsego County Chamber unwilling or unable to do much for downtown development, an Oneonta Chamber (the county Chamber sprung from an original Oneonta entity) could do a lot to help downtown solve its problems and capitalize on its opportunities.

Oneonta Mayor John Nader said he has not heard of tourists calling for baseball-themed shops downtown. But he said he has fielded complaints about limited store and restaurant hours.

"They are correct about that," Nader said.

It sounds so obvious, but Oneonta must decide what it wants its future to be. If being an arts and entertainment mecca is the goal, then appealing to the baseball crowd becomes less important.

But if tourism is to be the engine that drives downtown, then what’s needed is a coordinated approach by merchants, restaurateurs and city leaders to get our act together.

Without forcing any business person to do anything, great progress can be made _ perhaps under the aegis of an Oneonta chamber _ to get organized and give the tourists what they want.

The trick is to do it so that downtown Oneonta doesn’t lose its small-town charm and appeal.

It’s not going to be easy, but with a little planning and enterprise, we can show tourists and others that when they come to Oneonta, there really is a "there.’’