On Wednesday, April 10th, the community was invited to a Public Open House at O’Leary’s Restaurant, to view the plans that Re:New DeKalb and the SSA Design Group have put forward to consider for the downtown DeKalb area. Each member of the community was given Monopoly money upon entering the room full of exhibits. The money was to be put in envelopes indicating the person’s support for the various projects.
UPDATE: Here is a link to the PowerPoint presentation made by the SAA Design Group: Power Point Presentation – Recommendations Open House
What are your first impressions? Where would you put your Monopoly money? Let us know in the comments.
Below are pictures of the downtown projects put forth: (Click on a picture to enlarge)
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- Develop Outdoor Public Event Space
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- New Library Center Event Space
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- Realign West Locust Street
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- Communiversity Commons
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- Urban Business Incubator
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- Extend Lincoln Highway Streetscape
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- Free NIU-Downtown Shuttle
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- Extend Bicycle Sharrows Network
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- City Center Parking
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- Catalytic Projects
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- Revise Unified Development Ordinace
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5 Comments
It is a case of the chicken or the egg. A nice downtown is a plus for the community but if you don’t have the population with money to support it, it doesn’t work. Notice that Dekalb has many resale stores but can’t support a furniture store. I think that says something.
1st impressions? They had better have businesses and events downtown to attract people… building a pretty space won’t do it. The corner of 4th & Lincoln has LOTS of empty space on 2 corners, and not much use is made of those spaces. Some pics show LOTS of buildings being torn down for park space (N. & S of Van Buer Plaza). That is ONE way to not have empty storefronts, but I think that most of those spaces are being used right now as small offices and houses. Why tear down what is obviously affordable and existing? How many empty lots does the City own? How many local parks could be built? How many community gardens? Neighborhood parking where applicable? I’m not terribly impressed so far. I do like the bike path concepts, however, not to be completly negative. 🙂
This looks promising. I just hope they don’t bankrupt the community to achieve this vision. It’ll be really nice to have an accessible downtown with businesses that encourage positive growth and the ability to stay in our city instead of travelling to Rockford or the Fox River areas for stuff. I’m particularly interested in the mention of the children’s museum on the ‘Catalytic Projects’ slide. I hope they’re serious about that and other family-friendly projects!
They’re paying for it with Monopoly money so its all good. Monopoly money is a lot like TIF.
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I think they need to be more focused on the empty store fronts downtown before they start adding anything else. We need to see these empty spots filled first. If they want to make something of downtown DeKalb I think they should use this money as a tool to help interested people into these empty buildings, the money would be spent more wisely to attract business’s downtown. Parking is probably the biggest issue as to why people don’t shop/eat downtown, plus the stores that are downtown are all very much the same, we need more variety. Lets work on what we have before spending unnecessary money adding more or changing things around. I don’t think any of these new projects are of the best interest to tax payers in these times. Hate to be negative but just speaking how I feel.