Politics & Government
Clifton Residents Discuss Streetscape Master Plan
The master plan for Main Street in Clifton is still early in its design phase, but residents got the chance to weigh in at a public meeting Tuesday
Clifton residents and business owners took a look at some early ideas for the Streetscape Master Plan at a public meeting Tuesday night. The comprehensive plan will start at the triangle, continue all the way down Main Street and end at Clifton Heights.
The master plan will involve everything from landscaping to traffic circles to parking. Clifton resident and business owner Lisa Russek Robbins said a hot issue for her is sidewalks.
“We walk up and down Main Street a lot, we want to learn what it’s going to do to the environment of the town,” Russek Robbins said. “The whole sidewalk thing is huge for us, because we have none. We walk on the gravel shoulder.”
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Right now, the master plan is in the exploratory phase. Using federal money that dates back to 2005, Clifton hired the consulting firm Land Planning and Design Associates, or LPDA, out of Sterling to draw up preliminary renderings.
Tuesday night’s meeting was the second of three scheduled to talk about the master plan.
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“We’re just trying to involve the community; residents and businesses,” said Susan Yantis, Chairman of the Streetscape Master Plan. “We’re just now getting into the design phase.”
Yantis said the topic the business community is most concerned with is parking. Tuesday night, LPDA presented three parking options for Main Street. One offered angled parking on one side of the street, another offered parallel parking spots on both sides and a third allowed for more landscaping and parallel spots down just one side of Main Street.
Some of the concerns LPDA brought up at the public meeting included badly placed utility poles and not enough transition between the street and the sidewalk, which leads to people inadvertently parking on the sidewalk.
From here, LPDA will host a work group meeting in August and make a presentation to the town on September 27th. The third public meeting is slated for October 4th. The town council will be presented with final plans later in the fall.
If you want more information on LPDA’s preliminary plans, click here for a link to their website which contains a PDF of their work on the master plan. They also encourage the public to continue to weigh in as this process moves forward.
