Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Kuna should go big on plans for downtown

The first public workshop for the Kuna Downtown Corridor Plan will start at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 2, at the Kuna High School commons, 637 E. Deer Flat Road.
From many of the people you talk to around here, you kind of hear the same thing: Another study? Sheesh, we’ve studied this thing to death and still nobody’s done anything about downtown. I’m afraid to say that I feel myself slipping into that lot.
But we Americans are an optimistic bunch, so I’ll pull myself right on out of that naysaying attitude and pretend like something’s going to actually come of this most recent downtown study this time.
Well, for what it’s worth, anyway, I’ll offer my two cents.
I think we need to go big or go home. And going big means closing off Main Street to vehicle traffic and turning it into a pedestrian plaza.
What I see for Main Street is the entire street from Linder Road to Avenue D covered over in brick pavers, benches, planters, trees, restaurant and cafĂ© sidewalk seating. If you’ve read about or seen the pedestrian plazas that New York City has implemented at Times Square, you get the idea. Of course, pedestrian plazas are nothing new. I recognize, though, that turning Kuna’s Main Street into a pedestrian plaza sounds like a radical idea and most likely impossible.
But I think it can be done.

2 comments:

slfisher said...

Burlington, Vermont did it, too. It was interesting.

john la manna said...

I agree with Scott. Kuna needs a vision of a future not predicated on building permits but one that sees what it could become, I have also felt the frustration of not another study, but that was then and this is now let's see if the new leadership has a vision and can articulate it then can they go out and work to make it happen thank you