Representatives from the City's Office of Economic and Workforce Development and consultants EG&G Group unveiled concepts-in-progress last night for the Fayetteville St. streetscape concepts.
Monday night's meeting at the Hayti Heritage Center was attended by ten or so community members and an equal number of City staff, consultants and media representatives; Chris Dickey from OEWD noted that a conflicting meeting was contributing to the low turnout and that a second forum on the Fayetteville St. streetscape project had been scheduled at for Sept. 29 at 6pm at the center.
EG&G will be presenting its concepts for the Angier/Driver district tonight, with the Akron-based consultants returning next week for community meetings on the Mangum/Corporation Little Five Points area and E. Main St. In October, the team will return to discuss the W. Chapel Hill St. streetscape planning being developed with residents and the Quality of Life advocacy group.
At a high level, the designs unveiled Monday would be very familiar to Durhamites who've strolled through downtown Durham since its streetscape project -- a reflection more of shared best practices in urban corridor design, we'd imagine, than an intentional nod. We'll see over the next few meetings to what extent these design themes repeat across all five areas.
This planning effort represents approximately $300,000 in investment from the City, using funds initially earmarked for neighborhood streetscape efforts in the 2005 general obligation bond vote, noted Alan DeLisle, head of OEWD. City Council added another $500,000 towards the effort in fiscal year 2009, bringing the funds remaining for the work up to $1.7 million.
Still, DeLisle noted, that funding level represents just a down payment on what all five of these projects could cumulatively cost. "We're going to have to look at this as an investment over time," DeLisle said. "I hesitate to put a specific year on it... [some communities] look at this over a ten year time, or over phases."
The department head added that the City chose to proceed with design in all five targeted areas first in order to both ensure that residents would get project concepts that resonated with them, and to engage residents happy with the designs as advocates for ongoing funding and progress on the effort.
EG&G's concept for the Fayetteville St. corridor varies between different segments of the thoroughfare, reflecting slightly different treatments of the NCCU area and the historic neighborhood and small commercial district just to its north versus the thoroughfare and shopping center areas closer to Cornwallis and to downtown. Still, a number of elements persist throughout most of the plans:
- Widening sidewalks to 8' in most areas, while replacing the "devil's strip" narrow, often weed-strewn grass strips between the sidewalk and street with brick treatments;
- Burying electrical and utility infrastructure and installing historic-looking streetlights -- a mix of taller lights in thoroughfare districts and more pedestrian-scale fixtures in the NCCU and historic district areas;
- In thoroughfare segments, eliminating wide, often unused center areas in the wide asphalt and replacing them with landscaped median islands with designated turn areas, as with MLK Jr. Pkwy.;
- Separating parking areas from the street with low wrought-iron fencing and masonry columns;
- Using landscaped curbouts in commercial areas to add aesthetics to the roads while providing protected parking bays for cars.
All of these elements fit very much with the rationale for running this project out of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development in the first place: creating a more welcoming and attractive streetscape in economically disadvantaged areas doesn't just represent City investment in these struggling areas, but is intended to help encourage the redevelopment and improvement of local businesses and, in turn, create an economic incentive for further improvement to the surrounding neighborhoods.
A catalyst, if you will, to spur the kind of revitalization missing in these districts for decades.
In general, most of the residents in attendance last night looked favorably on these concepts. Pat Murray (of the Durham Skywriter) suggested the City look into re-using Fitzgerald bricks where possible in the project; these massive bricks came from a black-owned Durham firm of the same name in the late 1800s and were used to build a number of important structures, including St. Joseph's church itself.
One citizen also noted the importance of making sure the City would invest enough dollars to keep the streetscape attractive after the renovations were complete, to avoid investing in a project that the municipality wouldn't be maintained.
A number of residents, including J.C. "Skeepie" Scarborough III of Scarborough & Hargett Funeral Home, raised the concern that sufficient parking needs to be maintained to support local businesses, with the residents noting that businesses would suffer if patrons had nowhere to park. (Scarborough also made a reference to a project he wants to develop on four acres near the W.D. Hill rec center where the City has told him he can't have enough parking.)
EG&G pointed out that the renovations proposed here were all targeted to use the existing public right-of-way -- a cost savings in terms of land acquisition, while avoiding the need to snatch up parking spaces from commercial property owners' land.
The consultants did show in a number of their concept drawings the presence of sidewalk cafes and front patios on businesses, which they noted would not be a City investment, but instead a sign of what successful private-sector redevelopment of struggling and often vacant commercial buildings could lead to.
Wonder how long it would take the city to start construction on these projects once all is set and done...
Posted by: Freddie | January 26, 2009 at 08:00 AM