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With the construction project to make needed repairs to the aging water and sewer infrastructure beneath Main Street drawing nearer, the Town must make decisions regarding a concurrent streetscape redesign.<\/p>\n
Downtown business owners and members of the public were invited to a community information session at Partners Hall on March 3, 2020 to review preliminary streetscape design options and provide feedback to the project’s partners. Anyone who was unable to attend the meeting can submit feedback online at engagemuskoka.ca<\/a><\/span> until March 16.<\/p>\n About 60 people were present at the public meeting, many of them representatives from downtown businesses.<\/p>\n Steve Hernen, the Town’s director of operations and protective services, began the meeting with a reminder about where the project began: with public consultation in June 2018 that led to a design brief<\/a><\/span> created by consultants The Planning Partnership. “That’s the guiding principle for this whole design,” said Hernen. “So when people say to us, you know, ‘why are you thinking of putting trees here? What’s your concept?’ It’s what the people told council they wanted back in 2018.”<\/p>\n EXP, the consultants tasked with bringing the brief to life, have completed about 30 per cent of the design work and are now seeking input from businesses, residents and council.<\/p>\n The goal, added Hernen, is to have a design ready to go to tender in September so that construction can start in 2021. “We do have some tight timelines,” he said. “We intend to be back to council the end of this month with some more information and we intend to be back to council at the end of April. Hopefully, council will be ready to make some decisions and we can move this forward. If we delay this by four or five months, it starts to cause problems for the construction schedules that we have to meet to get the project done in a timely fashion.”<\/p>\n Representatives from EXP presented three design options to council on Feb. 24<\/a><\/span> (see a PDF copy of the presentation here<\/a><\/span>). Those options did include price estimates, but for the public meeting Hernen noted that “until we start to narrow these plans down a little bit more, we can’t tell you exactly what different items cost.”<\/p>\n Les Ranta of EXP provided an overview of some of the items the design team was particularly interested in gathering feedback on. Among those were flexible parking\u2014the ability to take parallel parking spots along Main Street and temporarily use those areas for events or seasonal patios\u2014and pedestrian crossings from King Street across to Civic Square in front of the Algonquin Theatre as well as at West Street; ‘Muskoka Moments’ design additions which could include seating, trees and other vegetation; a rejuvenation of Kent Park, at the corner of Brunel Road and Main Street, which could include a water feature, spaces for resting or meeting, and an information kiosk that could be removed during events; and, finally, a new gateway feature at Lorne Street that could be a landmark at the western entrance to downtown.<\/p>\n Downtown Huntsville BIA manager, Morgan Richter, said that the organization will be launching a communications plan and branding strategy before this summer to ensure details about the project are shared with local businesses and residents and that both residents and visitors are encouraged to visit downtown during the construction.<\/p>\n