From staff reports

news@joplinglobe.com

MIAMI, Okla. — The Miami Design and Review Committee on Thursday narrowed its choice of a design plan for downtown parking lots to one after looking at several that were submitted by landscape-design students from the University of Oklahoma at Norman.

The students volunteered to submit design concepts for the city-owned, public parking lots east and west of Main Street, and for improvements on Main Street.

The committee was appointed by the city to make recommendations for the parking lots and alleys.

“Wider alleys would allow for traffic, and so we could do some plantings and benches,” said Barbara Smith, director of the Coleman Theater.

The committee discussed buying benches for the alleys made from recyclable materials, a wrought-iron fence, and parking accessible to the disabled.

“A few cities have just begun to do alleys,” she said.

Fay Culver, with Main Street Miami, said the parking lots need new concrete work because of some deterioration.

“One of the things we’re talking about is trying to please all five senses,” she said.

Culver suggested plants, such as lavender and mint, in planters in the parking lots.

She also discussed the amount of rain water that is pouring off downtown buildings into the alleys.

One suggestion would be the addition of a vegetative bioswale, she said.

Smith discussed a downtown improvement project that she had visited in Newberry, S.C., a city about 43 miles northwest of Columbia, S.C., with a population slightly smaller than Miami.

Businesses added wrought-iron signs in front of their businesses with the business names included, she said, and similar light poles with banners were installed at corners. Big pots with small trees lined sidewalks in front of the businesses, she said.