Downtown beautification project being discussed

Times Contributor

 

Plans to revitalize the downtown area in Strathmore are being discussed as business owners are being asked for feedback on the project proposal.

Town council members Rocky Blokland and Bob Sobol have proposed a beautification project to improve Strathmore’s downtown. Blokland and Sobol are gathering feedback from local businesses who will be affected by the changes with the intention of presenting the information to rest of council at a later date as a possible future project.

“[Sobol and I] are going up and down the street with [the plan], talking to business owners to see what the feedback is,” said Blokland. “So far we’ve had pretty positive feedback.” 

Out of 32 businesses that Blokland and Sobol have talked to, only one business has offered negative comments.

Blokland says that changing downtown will help build “people’s pride” in their downtown area and “bring downtown Strathmore up to the level of the rest of the town.”

Since this plan is in the preliminary stages, no dates or budgets have been set. Blokland says that he and Sobol are just looking to get the word of the project out and co-operation from local business owners.

Blokland lists a few things that would be changed with the current proposal, if council so approved, which include exchanging advertising benches for decorative steel benches, replacing street lamps with coach lanterns, and adding a median into the center of the street and changing diagonal parking to parallel.

“There’s four or five different things we’re looking at,” said Blokland, “I’m trying to get people to look outside the box. It’s time for a change.”

While Blokland and Sobol both recognize the cons to these ideas, Blokland is confident that the residents of Strathmore will see that the pros outweigh the cons.

“We’re going to lose about 37 parking stalls,” said Blokland, and he knows that will be the “number one complaint.” However, he assures this won’t be a problem as there are three parking lots available in the downtown area to be utilized.

Blokland says that this plan, if approved, “won’t cost a huge amount of money.”

Positive results from the renovations include health benefits from being able to walk through downtown, a sense of pride and happiness from having a nicer downtown, and a reduction in traffic concerns.

“Basically we’re trying to do something to change the downtown area and make it look better. We want to brighten up the area,” he said.