A new building for a company's high-tech operations, new bars opening, a bus depot and an entertainment center: these downtown developments look promising to many people.

But how do they empower the poor and the needy in the city? These plans only try to bring back those who fled to the suburbs years ago: the white-collar, educated people; the young, college-age crowd.

What about the people - and especially the young people - who live in the city? What about their future? Is this another example of the "trickle-down" theory? We build it and eventually it trickles down to them in the form of minimum-wage jobs? Does the community need more minimum-wage jobs? Don't under-privileged city residents need education in order to attain white-collar jobs?

Why not build a Frederick Douglass Learning and Diversity Center? Douglass would be an excellent role model for many minorities in the city. He dared to learn how to read and write at the risk of death during America's shameful period of slavery. He fled north and established himself in this city, created a newspaper, and helped runaway slaves find freedom.

Instead of thinking of ways to bring in suburbia, why not turn our attention to those already in the city and create something that instills pride and a real future? Atlanta did this by creating the King Center in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A Frederick Douglass Center could be not only a museum dedicated to Frederick Douglass's life and accomplishments but also an institution dedicated to the future of inner-city children, with both traditional and vocational education. The city's schools could provide a feeder system of students who would earn an opportunity to attend the center based on their educational performance. Businesses would benefit by cultivating a diverse work force.

The center could also have an entertainment venue focusing on the value of different cultures. It could be cutting edge, a marvel, a triumph in the struggle to liberate human suffering.

It could draw tourists. And it could make the city a proud center of racial tolerance and learning - this in a city that was torn apart by race riots in the early 1960's.

TONY TRAMA, ROCHESTER