Marion Closer to New Downtown, Still Years Away

By Justin Foss, Reporter

Tools

By Daren Sukhram

Story Created: Nov 20, 2009 at 5:49 PM CST

Story Updated: Nov 20, 2009 at 9:37 PM CST

MARION - City staff are working on what to do next after a big vote Thursday night. The city council approved a controversial traffic concept for downtown Marion.

Now the city needs to fill in the details.

The big picture is to route most traffic onto Sixth Avenue, and off Seventh Avenue through downtown. Seventh is currently the main street through Marion.

Despite Thursday's vote, city leaders say there still are years of work ahead before any construction begins.

The plan will eventually have cars driving on what is now a dead-end gravel road. But, before that happens, the city says they have a lot of planning to do.

The big picture will affect the nearly 18,000 cars that come through the uptown area every day. And while those plans mean reducing traffic on one street by building another, exactly how that's done is still up in the air.

Planning and Development Director Thomas Treharne said, "Now, we say, OK, lets take a good look at this. Is a three lane configuration working, or should it be a four? Where do we need traffic signals. We're getting into the details now."

Those details will depend on the result of expensive studies and public input. But ideas like adding a round-about and the placement of the new roads are almost certain.

"They wouldn't be proposing it if they didn't have a very well, professional intelligent guess that it will work," Treharne added.

The city says these plans will help them sell the area to developers and companies.

Before this, the city says there's been no plan for how or where to grow the uptown area...and the development office says the area is already under-used.

Shovels won't hit the ground to build the new 6th avenue for about 5 years. But, city staff tells us work on the uptown area with adding trees and fixing and enhancing sidewalks could start in less than two years.

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