City Council approved a new road map in the effort to re-imagine downtown Durango’s Main Avenue with wider sidewalks and pedestrian-friendly features in the interest of finding common ground with residents opposed to or concerned with the project.
The city will hold off on exploring construction funding options until designs for the Fifth Street to 14th Street Main Avenue corridor are carried out to 60% completion next year and until construction begins on the proposed new city hall and police station.
That’s where the road map ends.
At that point of design completion, cost estimates for construction would be available, and City Council will need to approve any further forward motion on the project, Sarah Hill, city transportation director, said at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
City Council voted 4-1 to approve the new road map after hearing from seven residents who asked councilors to either postpone the project or to drop it completely. Councilor Olivier Bosmans voted to reject the newest proposal and timeline for Next Step.
Mayor Jessika Buell, who suggested the idea of postponing the pursuit of construction funding at an earlier council meeting in September, said hearing the frustrations of business owners has been “eye-opening,” and she supports reapproaching the project to understand all the positives and negatives.
“Slowing down and doing it intentionally, I think, it’s important,” she said.
She said the city has to crack open Main Avenue to perform necessary sewer and water infrastructure upgrades, and if Main Avenue has to be opened up once, it’d be good to complete other desirable changes at the same time instead of having more construction on Main Avenue later.
“If we rip up Main Street for utilities and then five years later council comes back and wants to improve ADA parking spaces or transit stops or whatever, it just seems like a waste,” she said.
Buell said she’s also concerned about Next Step getting conflated with a separate project to renovate the former historic high school at 201 east 12th St. for a new city hall and police station.
Misinformation is already making rounds online falsely claiming the city plans to spend 2005 sales tax dollars on Next Step, she said. The city plans to ask voters to reauthorize the sales tax in April for the new city hall and police station.
“And I do think it’s fiscally irresponsible to try to be doing two of these projects and talking about construction at the same time,” she said. “In order to really grasp what this project (Next Step) is going to be, we do need full design documents. I do need to see how much utilities are going to cost. We have no idea.
“I need to see if we’re just going to do curb and gutter with the utilities, how much is that going to cost?” she added. “If we’re going to do Next Steps, maybe that we find common ground … pair down how much does that cost? How much does a parking garage cost?”
With the city’s approval of the path forward for Next Step, the city will next finalize its demonstration pilot program. One of two pedlets – large pseudo sidewalks meant to represent extended sidewalks proposed in the Next Step project – will be removed.
Hill said the pedlet in the 600 block of Main Avenue wasn’t installed until late summer and adjacent businesses didn’t have time to properly utilize it, so it will be decommissioned.
Temporary curb cuts represented by paint and flexible posts will be installed at the intersections of Main Avenue and College Drive, Seventh Street and Eighth Street to represent turning radiuses, a concern of residents and business owners on Main Avenue.
“For the design we’ll be incorporating the feedback received to this point and to the preliminary design plans for the 600 and 700 blocks so that people will be able to see the adjustments that we are making based on requests,” she said.
After the curb cuts are installed, the city will pause designs until January 2025 when a grant contract for the designs is enacted.
Next year, the city will resume engineering designs for the whole downtown Main Avenue corridor, with public meetings to be held once designs reach 30% completion.
“I’m very grateful for the offers we have heard tonight to work together and be collaborative,” Hill said, referencing public comments encouraging the city to slow the project down and listen to businesses about their concerns. “Because despite our best efforts, we do continue to hear that people feel that they’re not heard in this process. We are going to work to really improve on that and enhance community engagement should this project move forward.”
She said the city will form a cross-departmental team to collect feedback from residents and hold public meetings.
Cost estimates are expected once designs reach 60% completion, she said.
“That information will be made public ... and at that point there won’t be further work on Downtown’s Next Step until further council action,” she added.
The city will be presenting a community questionnaire about Next Step to City Council at an Oct. 1 study session. On Tuesday, the city’s next Engage Durango forum will focus on the Next Step project.
cburney@durangoherald.com
