By Brenna Wiegand
New trees, wider sidewalks and pedestrian curb extensions: Silverton Urban Renewal Agency has chosen to proceed with Concept 2 for the city’s Phase 1 of the Downtown Street Enhancement Project.
Before its passage, however, the agency members, who are all also city council members, discussed every part of the plan up one side and down the other.
Agency member Randal Thomas made the motion to adopt Concept 2 at June’s meeting but it fell to a tie; member Kyle Palmer was on vacation.
At the July 25 meeting, Randal revisited his motion, this time modifying it to reduce the new sidewalks’ uniform width from 14 to 13 feet. Sidewalk widths currently vary by as much as 2 feet in the proposed enhancement area. He also suggested drinking fountains and a town clock be added to the list of design elements under consideration, saying they “would give us the Norman Rockwell feeling that’s desired.” Other elements include decorative lampposts, benches, trash receptacles, bike racks; kiosks. As modified, the estimated implementation cost of Concept 2 is $418,446.
The motion passed 4-3.
Scott Walker, Laurie Carter and Mayor Stu Rasmussen dissented, all preferring a more conservative tack as in Concept 1, estimated to cost $372,215. The possible 3-6 month disruption of downtown business while enhancements and water and sewer upgrades are being done could have the opposite effect than that desired, they contended. Some feared that the very actions intended to bring urban renewal may actually bring about urban blight.
“We have less than half a dozen problem areas on that block in terms of sidewalks and the expense of taking all those sidewalks out – some of them are really quite new – and replacing them with new sidewalks is to me really throwing good money after bad,” member Scott Walker said.
At a previous meeting, Public Works Director Gerald Fisher stressed the importance of replacing the 80-year-old iron water main pipe running under Main Street.
“By the time we are done doing the underground infrastructure the sidewalks and curbs will be all cut up,” he said.
While she said she would support whichever plan the agency adopted, member Laurie Carter was so dismayed at the removal of the existing trees that she emphasized being on record as voting against the trees’ removal.
“I just want everyone to understand that the trees would be gone; it’ll be a long process with pipes coming up and out and sidewalks being redone before any new, little trees would go in,” Carter said.
“The indiscriminant removal of trees is something that I don’t think any of us want to do,” member Bill Cummins said. “But for the overall end result, going forward 50 or 100 years, this is the research and the presentations of the concepts and the staff recommendations; their expertise and the research that they’ve done makes it the right thing to do.”
“It’s my understanding that we are going to be looking at the infrastructure… The sidewalks would be cut up for that purpose anyway, whether the trees are going to come down or not,” agency member Judy Schmidt said. Further, she stated that Concept 2’s provision for relocating the street trees will help create the plaza feel that had generated such excitement in the community.
“I look at Main Street between Water and First, and, as of early to mid-August, we will have 100 percent occupancy in those business spaces,” Mayor Stu Rasmussen said. Yet during the construction period, which he estimates at 90 days and then the sidewalk project (which he estimates at another 2 to 4 months) customers would “stay away in droves.”
It could spell disaster, he said, particularly “if your current level of business is just kind of teetering along at ‘miserable’ – and I own a downtown business … and ‘miserable’ is being really optimistic.”
Rasmussen also likened new trees to “twigs,” after which member Kyle Palmer noted that the trees planted at his residence eight years ago are now “as big as I’d ever want trees downtown to be.
“I don’t think I’ve thought more about an issue in my entire time on council than this one,” Palmer said. “I value everyone’s passion, but I just can’t see us moving forward putting money into a sidewalk infrastructure improvement and leaving the trees in place … That’s what I’m left with after an awful lot of research.”
Besides observing that the root ball of every tree downtown is above grade to some degree, creating ongoing sidewalk degradation, Palmer said he was concerned that the pruning required to get the trees planted in 1983 in shape would result in trees not much bigger than new ones. He also thinks they are the wrong type for a downtown location.
“I see a lot more trees that I think would be more pleasing than either of them,” he said. “In looking at a number of arborists and urban tree experts, their tree lists don’t contain the European Hornbeam.”
“We do provide a little more open space where we can have tables and chairs,” Schmidt said, “but it’s not going to be easy either way.”
