Main Street unveils downtown CID plan

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By Joey Berlin

Originally published 01:58 p.m., April 24, 2008
Updated 01:58 p.m., April 24, 2008

Phase One of Emporia Main Street’s effort to begin creating a vibrant downtown is complete, and on Wednesday, a consultant from Anderson Macadam Architects showed city and county officials a rough vision of what downtown could be.

In a luncheon in the Little Theater at the Civic Building, Steve Bowling of Anderson Macadam detailed the current draft of the land use plan for Main Street’s Community Initiated Development program. The CID plan includes the much-discussed Black and Gold district that would wrap around Emporia State University on the north end of Commercial Street and would be targeted toward students. Also featured in the plan are other specialized districts that would be situated further south in the downtown area, including an arts and entertainment district and a multicultural zone.

Emporia Main Street Director Kayla Oney emphasized that the land use plan is a working document, not a set-in-stone plan for downtown. Oney said the second and final phase of the CID project was coming up with tools and strategies to implement ideas from phase one. Phase Two, she said, will begin with a series of meetings with the CID committee beginning in the next couple of weeks or so.

“And then, it’ll be a six- to eight-week process after that for the final phase,” she said.

During his presentation, Bowling explained Anderson Macadam’s process of combining community input with expert opinions to identify the boundaries of the Main Street district and characteristics of Emporia that would be useful in developing downtown. Among those characteristics are Emporia’s magnets, entities that draw large numbers of visitors to Emporia from the region and from elsewhere, and its anchors, which are features that provide support and stability and create structure for the creation of a healthy downtown.

Emporia State was identified as the Main Street district’s magnet. Entities identified as its anchors included the Granada Theatre, White Auditorium, the Lyon County Courthouse, and grocery stores and churches.

The Main Street district essentially runs west to east from Congress Street to Market Street, and north to south from 12th Avenue to South Avenue. However, in the land use plan, the Black and Gold district at the north end of the district moves across 12th street to wrap around the southwest corner of the ESU campus. Tenth Avenue marks the south end of the Black and Gold district.

The arts and entertainment district between Seventh and 10th Streets on Commercial would carry shops that emphasize arts and entertainment, an art gallery, and “studio-type lofts,” Bowling said.

The multicultural zone, marked on the plan as the Antiques and International Marketplace, would be located between Merchant and Mechanic and between Fourth Avenue and Second Avenue.

“We really see this as not necessarily being a distinct zone within this greater area, but as small business and entrepreneurs that really kind of start to (fill in) the area within this commercial zone, you really create this nice kind of urban professional office and services area, where you can go down and buy pad Thai noodles if you want to over lunch, or pick up (an) antique chair,” Bowling said. “Whatever your fancy.”

Anderson Macadam used the same process of gathering people’s personal lists to identify what people thought was missing from the downtown area.

“And overwhelmingly, without hesitation, the one thing that was identified was some kind of a boutique, or extended-living-stay hotel and living quarters,” Bowling said. “And there was a lot of discussion about how that could start to generate more people downtown to support the shops.”

Other components needed, according to the people surveyed, included a microbrewery, improved residential opportunities, consistent evening hours for downtown retail, and outdoor gathering spaces.

Bowling said after the presentation that the Black and Gold district was a very important part of the CID plan.

“Because one of the exercises, and one of the things that we had discussed through this process is, how do we keep ESU students in Emporia during the holidays or during the weekends?” he said. “And so, again, going back to the idea of developing a sense of community, along with the existing campus, is key in doing that.”

Oney said there was no timetable for seeing any of the land use plan come to fruition, citing comments by Bowling about the project being dependent on the state of the economic market.

“It depends on what kind of opportunities become available, and when (they) become available, and taking advantage of that opportunity, is really when you’re gonna see that time take place,” she said. “And when that’s gonna happen, nobody really knows. But the important part of it is to have the plan in place, to take advantage of those opportunities when they come about.”