Fri, Jul 18 2008
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Published May 16, 2008 09:48 pm - WEBB CITY, Mo. — If you had asked Webb City residents about building a pedestrian bridge over Highway 171 just five months ago, they would have said you were crazy. Webb City officials receive downtown plan from students By Melissa Dunson
mdunson@joplinglobe.com WEBB CITY, Mo. — If you had asked Webb City residents about building a pedestrian bridge over Highway 171 just five months ago, they would have said you were crazy. That’s according to the city’s economic development director, Chuck Surface, who said working with 10 architecture students from Drury University in Springfield has not only created a master plan for what Webb City could look like in 2030, but it’s expanded the minds of the city’s residents and encouraged them to dream big. A meeting Friday marked the final gathering of town residents and officials and the students. Matt Laughlin, a fourth-year Drury student, presented the complete report. Bill Perry and Eileen Nichols, Webb City residents and members of the Downtown Advisory Committee that will work from Friday’s final report, still aren’t sure that a pedestrian bridge is the answer to Webb City’s visibility problem, but agreed that the effort has strengthened their community’s goals and identity. “I think it’s helped everyone to think outside the box and think big,” Perry said. “It’s helped us to identify our challenges and look for ways to address them,” Nichols said. The work is now up to that advisory committee to study the report, decide what elements the city wants to move forward with, establish a timetable for projects, and find funding sources. Perry said the committee, made up of five to 10 people, had not set a date for its first meeting or named a leader yet. “Right now, we just have a lot of reading ahead of us,” Perry said. Some of the practical next steps of the downtown-revitalization effort include forming community committees, and creating laws and ordinances that set design and maintenance standards. Other steps are modifying the traffic flow down Main Street, registering buildings on state and local historic registries, starting new downtown events, and encouraging building owners to develop their structures for mixed uses. The final meeting with the Drury students attracted some local attention. Residents and business owners sat next to county commissioners and even U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt. The students’ plan breaks the downtown Main Street area into five zones — a gateway, southern transition, city center, Route 66 area and a northern transition. The main proposals include a pedestrian bridge from Main Street to King Jack Park over Highway 171 that would extend the park into the downtown, constructing roundabouts in both transition zones, and turning the old Route 66 gas station into an information and travelers’ center. Also proposed are a collection of large and pocket parks, and an effort to even out the choppy building lineup with in-fill structures or trees. The group also proposed widening the sidewalks, building a new City Hall and turning all the diagonal parking into parallel spaces. 
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