Those attending a recent ribbon-cutting for the new UMass Downtown retail store and event space in Amherst center were invited to an afterparty at the Uptown Tap & Grille, which despite having a seemingly different geographical designation, is a neighboring business in the same building.

Organizers of the post-event reception had fun with that, telling those who might want a drink or a meal at the restaurant that they would be heading “from downtown to uptown.”

Though the businesses at 104 and 108 North Pleasant St. use different identifiers for their locations, this may demonstrate how terminology is ever evolving.

For at least some of those who grew up in Amherst in the 1970s and 1980s, much of the commercial area in Amherst was referred to as “uptown,” such as when leaving the Amherst Regional High School campus for the day. It was similar for those attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the 1990s, especially if they were heading for a night out at the bars.

Amherst Business Improvement District Executive Director John Page, who grew up in Pelham and went to the high school, suspects that has changed, especially with the Amherst BID using the URL amherstdowntown.com, and a home page that states “Experience Downtown: a walkable mile of cuisine, culture, art, music and independent film at the center of legendary trail networks for hiking, biking, arts and literature.”

“It’s partly generational, it’s partly geographical,” Page said, noting he has tended to call it “downtown.”

Aside from the Amherst BID’s website, though, the the only formal use of “downtown” is at the new UMass store, while “uptown” is in the names of both the Uptown Tap & Grille and McMurphy’s Uptown Tavern, located at 37 North Pleasant. Uptown Tap & Grille is run by mid-1990s graduates of UMass.

How “uptown” and “downtown” came to be used in the vernacular of those living in Amherst isn’t clear, though one observer notes the downtown bars 40 years ago were considered The Pub, Charlie’s and The Spoke, all located in the East Pleasant and Pray streets area, while the former Time Out, where McMurphy’s now is, alongside the former Delano’s and Barselotti’s, were the uptown bars.

That jibes with the presence from February 1993 to August 1994 of a pizzeria called Uptown Pizza, which competed with Antonio’s in the vicinity of those uptown bars, and a 2001 Massachusetts Daily Collegian article referring to Barselotti’s, or Barsie’s, as “situated in the heart of uptown Amherst, slap-bang in the middle of Club Sidewalk.”

Plumbley’s, a former restaurant on Main Street opposite Town Hall, in an advertisement in the Gazette in the 1980s, described its location as “uptown” Amherst, and in a similar vein Valley Bicycles Ltd. at 319 Main St. closer to the Emily Dickinson Museum, in the early 2000s also used “uptown” Amherst in its ads, to distinguish that from its Hadley location.

If geography plays a role in how the area is identified, then students attending both Crocker Farm School on West Street and Fort River School on South East Street have to physically go up to get to Amherst center, whether walking, bicycling or driving.

In fact, living on Amity Street as a youngster, W.D. Cowls President Cinda Jones said that she would have to go uphill to get to the center. With downtown now in more common use, Jones said that the Mill District in North Amherst, which she has developed, could perhaps now be known as uptown.

Amherst’s mercantile and civic centers have changed over time, notes retired Planning Director Jonathan Tucker, with town center in colonial times on lower Main Street, where North East and South East streets converge, now part of the East Amherst village center, and even before the Revolutionary War the business center came to be on top of the hill, associated with the First Congregational Church. Once Amherst College was founded in 1821, that stabilized the main commercial area.

Traditionally, Tucker observes, “downtown” is more general and seems to refer to historic commercial and civic centers, while “uptown” is a more urban term and historically refers to an urban residential area, within or associated with a mixed-use center.

Assistant Town Manager David Ziomek, who grew up in North Amherst and has worked for the town for 20 years, said it’s likely in his high school days that he would have referred to the center as uptown, but that in his municipal position he knows it mostly as Amherst center.

Former Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Tony Maroulis attributes the frequency of saying “downtown” to Jerry Jolly, whose family owned The Pub. In 2002, Jolly founded an organization called Promoting Downtown Amherst, or the PDA, a precursor to the formation of the Amherst Business Improvement District.

Gabrielle Gould is the former executive director of the Amherst BID and continues to oversee the Downtown Amherst Foundation, which runs the Drake performance venue.

Like others, Gould said she believes the terms to be geographical in origin, as heading south on North Pleasant Street to the main intersection of Amity and Main streets the road has a noticeable rise, thus people are heading up, or going to “uptown.”

Whatever the case for the use of the terms, Gould said having side-by-side businesses using both designations is interesting. “It’s very friendly juxtaposition, and I love that they did it,” Gould said.

Page, who now serves as BID executive director, said he’s invested in the success of Amherst, so he wouldn’t discourage people from using whatever they want to refer to Amherst’s main business district as.

“We embrace it all – uptown, downtown and center of town,” he said.  “Whatever we call it, let’s embrace it and enjoy it.”

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.