Widen Main St.?

[TheArtist]

One community had other ideas and thrived....

HAMBURG, N.Y. — How did this Rust Belt village of 10,000 people resurrect itself from a 30-year slide? It started with a road.
Connect With NYTMetro

"Twelve years ago, the State Transportation Department proposed improving U.S. Route 62, the village's mile-long Main Street, by adding another traffic lane, removing parallel parking and narrowing sidewalks. When Susan Burns, a lifelong Hamburg resident, saw the plan, she remembers asking, "What are you doing with the trees and the people?" She said she was told by state officials, "We have to get the traffic through."

Ms. Burns feared that the road expansion might be the fatal blow to the village, just south of Buffalo, which was already knocked down by the collapse of the area's steel industry and the opening of a nearby mall. The village that many had once compared to the idyllic Bedford Falls in the 1940s movie "It's a Wonderful Life" worried that it was sliding toward Pottersville, or worse yet, a ghost town.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/nyregion/widen-main-st-community-had-other-ideas-and-thrived.html?_r=0

[Weatherdemon]

Wow!

Very cool!

[heironymouspasparagus]

Broken Arrow is going the other way...the idiot way.

[TheArtist]

Broken Arrow is going the other way...the idiot way.

If true, that's a shame.  There was once talk of a rail line between BA's downtown and Tulsa's downtown being a possibility in the future. The thought was that BA was wanting to begin gradually redeveloping it's downtown into a more pedestrian friendly/transit friendly "urban village" type area.  If they do just the opposite of that, prospects of ever putting in rail there becomes less likely and much more costly and inefficient.

We had all these experts come into town and tell us how lucky we were to be at this stage in our development where we could make changes now that would make our futures so much easier when and if we ever began putting in transit.  Experts from other cities that told us of "lessons learned" and "terribly costly mistakes they made" that with small, strategic, inexpensive changes now, we could avoid.  But what do we continue to do?....

[heironymouspasparagus]

If true, that's a shame.  There was once talk of a rail line between BA's downtown and Tulsa's downtown being a possibility in the future. The thought was that BA was wanting to begin gradually redeveloping it's downtown into a more pedestrian friendly/transit friendly "urban village" type area.  If they do just the opposite of that, prospects of ever putting in rail there becomes less likely and much more costly and inefficient.

We had all these experts come into town and tell us how lucky we were to be at this stage in our development where we could make changes now that would make our futures so much easier when and if we ever began putting in transit.  Experts from other cities that told us of "lessons learned" and "terribly costly mistakes they made" that with small, strategic, inexpensive changes now, we could avoid.  But what do we continue to do?....

They are widening Main street even as we speak.  The council has been pushing the parallel parking thing very hard, over the essentially unanimous objections of people who attend the meetings.  The big problem is they have First Baptist and Rhema pulling all the strings in that town, so it is the standard "slash and burn" method of growth/development - old, obsolete, and counterproductive, but still alive and well in BA.  The new people in town left their previous town to get that "small town" feel - and brought their "bigger city" attitude with them to trash that feel that they moved there for in the first place.

[Townsend]

They are widening Main street even as we speak.  The council has been pushing the parallel parking thing very hard, over the essentially unanimous objections of people who attend the meetings.  The big problem is they have First Baptist and Rhema pulling all the strings in that town, so it is the standard "slash and burn" method of growth/development - old, obsolete, and counterproductive, but still alive and well in BA.  The new people in town left their previous town to get that "small town" feel - and brought their "bigger city" attitude with them to trash that feel that they moved there for in the first place.

They envision this...



"Concrete is being poured on Main Street with the new sidewalks completed in front of some of the businesses on the east side of Main between Dallas and Commercial streets. The new planters, which will house numerous fragrant roses, have also been installed making construction progress more visible."

[heironymouspasparagus]

They envision this...



"Concrete is being poured on Main Street with the new sidewalks completed in front of some of the businesses on the east side of Main between Dallas and Commercial streets. The new planters, which will house numerous fragrant roses, have also been installed making construction progress more visible."

I hadn't see that picture...well, at least they got rid of the parallel parking carp!  Good for them!!

They have a nice downtown.  We go there fairly often just to walk up and down the street to window shop and get some chocolate!!  They have an amazing chocolatier there...world class!!  Easily as good as anything I have had on the left or right coasts....or one package a friend sent from Belgium.

[Bumby]

That chocolatier used to be in Tulsa.

I'm not as spun out as some old BA natives about the narrowing of Main Street, I was sad to see two of the buildings on the left side of the artist's rendering torn down a few months ago.  I think the Rose District name stinks.

[heironymouspasparagus]

That chocolatier used to be in Tulsa.

I'm not as spun out as some old BA natives about the narrowing of Main Street, I was sad to see two of the buildings on the left side of the artist's rendering torn down a few months ago.  I think the Rose District name stinks.

Three lanes will probably work out better than what they had.  The hole where they took the buildings out has some foundation work going on.  That was a stupid thing to do...removing the old ones.

Roses in containers?  Geez...what are they thinking?  The really should have talked to someone who knows a little bit about growing roses.  Maybe even go to OSU Extension and talk to the Master Gardeners...

[Conan71]

That chocolatier used to be in Tulsa.

I'm not as spun out as some old BA natives about the narrowing of Main Street, I was sad to see two of the buildings on the left side of the artist's rendering torn down a few months ago.  I think the Rose District name stinks.

Is that the one which was on the east side of Harvard in the small strip center to the south of the old Doctor's Hospital?

[Bumby]

That is/was Old World Confectionery on Harvard - last I looked it was still there.  Noveau, the one in Broken Arrow, was on the north side of the strip center @ 16th and Memorial for a number of years before it moved.  It was really hard to spot and I was looking for it.  The address was on Memorial but the store faced 16th.

In The Raw is building on Main St, BA.   Odd things are done to roses....I remember when rose bushes were planted in a long stretch of the skinny grass median of the Turner Turnpike in front of the McD's/Bristow.