MOUNT VERNON — The beginnings of a plan to improve downtown parking and traffic was laid out to Main Street Mount Vernon board members and community leaders Thursday afternoon.
Jason Sudy of OHM Advisors, an architecture, engineering, and planning firm based in Columbus, credited the community for its involvement right from the start of the project.
“The biggest and most exciting thing for us working here – and we’ve worked in many downtowns in many communities – is that oftentimes you have to set a framework for these types of plans that involve establishing capacity,” Sudy said. “The fantastic news here is that you’re all already here and you are pulling in the same direction and great things have already been undertaken.”
The downtown plan process began with a steering committee, a number of meetings, and a public meeting to understand what they are trying to do and to gather ideas. “There’s a lot of details involved in creating a plan like this,” Sudy said.
Sudy, his team from OHM Advisors, and MS Consultants, Inc. are working to build on the progress already made. They presented possible plans for the downtown square, the city’s southern entrance, parking, and downtown housing. The planning project has been funded by Ariel Foundation.
Sudy noted that a large portion of the pavement around the square is going unused, notably large areas of the square that remain covered by leaves in the fall because they were not being used by traffic. His team suggested utilizing the square for pedestrians by separating parking from the square along the edges with clearly delineated areas and decorative islands.
“We could start to capture some of that space, keep the functionality, still allow the trucks that do need to use that area to get through, but also change the pavement, change the materials,” said Sudy. “Make it more pervious, make the water be able to drain through, make it have a different character and feel so that you could start to extend the pedestrian experience.”
Sudy said it was also important to improve the look and feel of West High Street.
OHM Advisors, however, could not come up with a satisfactory answer to what they called the southern gateway to the town and how trucks are routed.
“Right now, all the trucks, if they’re going south, have to funnel into that one single bridge that is at the very south of downtown,” Sudy said, noting that the route could not be changed. “We don’t have another route that leads from directly downtown to the south, and we have industry here and we want to support that.”
Sudy said they had to balance that desire to continue supporting the local industries while also extending pedestrian traffic further south.
Despite not having a concrete answer, they still provided three concepts that could be hashed out in the future. Those included a traffic circle at the square; a modified traffic circle at the intersection of Mulberry, Main, and Gay streets with riverfront expansion; or a “triangle-about” with riverfront expansion in the West Ohio Avenue, Phillips Drive, and South Mulberry Street area.
MS Consultants gathered data about parking and perceptions of its availability within the community. Current parking conditions in Mount Vernon are a mix of private and public parking, though most streets and lots are utilized less than 50 percent.
“You don’t have a huge occupancy problem,” said Valerie Croasmun of MS Consultants. “There’s available parking, it’s just recommendations how to best repurpose that as the city’s growing.”
Downtown housing was also discussed in light of the prediction that Central Ohio will grow by 500,000 people in the next 30 years. County-level data showed that Mount Vernon was losing $26 million in retail, food, and accomodation sales as residents shopped outside of the county.
“This will be our roadmap for potential implementation over the next five to 10 years,” Sudy said. He added that it would be beneficial to start on a project quickly in order to build on the momentum already in place.
“We’ve got this incredible asset,” said Jeff Harris, a member of the downtown plan steering committee. “People drive into Mount Vernon and are like, ‘this is really nice.’ It is. But now it’s time to take it to the next level.”
Harris said the process, which keeps evolving as more questions get asked and answers are sometimes found, is an important one if downtowns want to continue to draw in families and businesses.
“I think these guys are getting the process right,” Harris added. “Now it’s up to the community to decide how do you like the results of the process. Do you like the idea of parking and new roadways and things of that nature?”
The steering committee will continue to seek the community’s opinion on the plan as more and more details are hashed out. Once a concrete plan is in place, it will be taken to Mount Vernon City Council for approval, possibly in the first half of 2018.
Information about the downtown plans can be found at www.mountvernondowntownplan.com. Thursday’s presentation, while not available online at the moment, will be uploaded once the planning process has been completed.
