Will we finally see a ‘High Side’ project completed?

It appears a long-antic­i­pat­ed project to reimag­ine the “high side” of South Main Street between Broadway and Lexington Avenue may soon become a reality.

Last Tuesday, the pub­lic was invit­ed to meet with city offi­cials and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Palmer Engineering to view two pro­posed plans and ask ques­tions. Chuck Witt and I attend­ed the event, along with sev­er­al inter­est­ed local residents.

My first impres­sion of the pro­posed plans was extreme­ly pos­i­tive. The first thing I noticed was the scope of the project extend­ed beyond just the east side (the “high side”) of Main. The plans involve both sides of the street, includ­ing side­walks and park­ing amenities.

The dif­fer­ences between the two plans are fair­ly triv­ial. The dom­i­nant fea­tures are the same in both, and I’ll only describe those.

The proposals

The plans call for remov­ing most of the steps along the high side, leav­ing only a rebuilt sec­tion of “social stairs” direct­ly across the street from the cour­t­house. This makes sense. The steps are main­ly used for seat­ing at pub­lic events on the cour­t­house lawn, such as the Rock the Block and Christmas tree-light­ing events. The removed sec­tions of steps may be missed by atten­dees of parades, but oth­er than that, they are sim­ply in the way. Not to men­tion unsightly.

Removing long sec­tions of steps enables the design­ers to widen the side­walks in front of most of the store­fronts along the high side, pro­vid­ing space for out­door seat­ing and oth­er street­side activities.

The oth­er major fea­ture that stands out is the removal of park­ing on the high side while trans­form­ing the park­ing on the oppo­site side from par­al­lel to diag­o­nal. While diag­o­nal park­ing is eas­i­er to nav­i­gate for most dri­vers and allows for more vehi­cles to park in the same amount of street frontage, the over­all effect of both changes will result in the loss of about 13 park­ing spaces, accord­ing to a Palmer rep­re­sen­ta­tive I spoke with.

This may both­er some peo­ple, but the fact is there is no short­age of park­ing down­town. I have attend­ed numer­ous events in the area over the years, includ­ing sold-out shows at Leeds, and have nev­er failed to find a park­ing space with­in a block or two of my destination.

One pos­si­ble neg­a­tive fea­ture is the removal of turn­ing lanes at both ends of the project. This will, at times, result in longer wait times for vehi­cles turn­ing left onto Broadway or Lexington. But most of the time, there isn’t enough traf­fic to jus­ti­fy those turn lanes. It’s a small price to pay to accom­mo­date the oth­er improvements.

Finally — and this is the most excit­ing part — the aes­thet­ic appeal of the new designs can­not be denied. Replacing most of the steps with ter­raced land­scape walls and attrac­tive rail­ings results in a street view that is stun­ning and nice­ly com­pli­ments the his­toric build­ing facades fronting Main Street.

Other fea­tures adding util­i­ty and beau­ty include a paver band, land­scape plant­i­ngs, and what appears to be a new bike lane. (I failed to ver­i­fy that with the offi­cials at the meeting.)

The new designs also pre­serve the exist­ing pedes­tri­an cross­ing on the south side of Court Street, which aligns with the walk­way from street lev­el up to the high-side sidewalk.

City Manager Mike Flynn told me he is opti­mistic about mov­ing the project for­ward this time around. The next steps involve select­ing the win­ning option and oth­er final touch­es, get­ting approval from the city com­mis­sion, and secur­ing fund­ing for the project.

Regaining lost momentum

As the year 2020 dawned, I felt like our down­town busi­ness dis­trict had picked up con­sid­er­able momen­tum and was well on its way to a renais­sance. We all know what hap­pened next. The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic set us all back sev­er­al years.

Today, I see plen­ty of evi­dence that we have bounced back and are poised to make a quan­tum leap for­ward. Two new restau­rants and at least one new store have opened in recent months. The McEldowny Building restora­tion is bring­ing that his­toric struc­ture back to life. We’ve seen the addi­tion of a new parklet.

But to real­ly appeal to shop­pers and din­ers — espe­cial­ly those from out of town — we need to see dra­mat­ic improve­ments in our infra­struc­ture. This long-delayed project can be a spark that leads to fur­ther improvements.

Once this project is com­plete, I’d like to see the rest of the Main Street busi­ness dis­trict receive sim­i­lar treat­ment.  This block is a great place to start – the oth­er blocks won’t face the same chal­lenge of hav­ing a high side to con­tend with.

Like the vast major­i­ty of Clark Countians, I nei­ther live nor work down­town. But whether one lives in Stoneybrook, Pilot View, Trapp, or any­where else in the coun­ty, down­town Winchester is the focal point of our com­mu­ni­ty. It’s where we cel­e­brate hol­i­days and fes­ti­vals, where we find unique shops and the finest local eater­ies and bars, enjoy live the­ater, vis­it the Farmer’s Market, and so much more. 

To a large extent, one can judge the health of a com­mu­ni­ty by the con­di­tion of its down­town. Completing projects like this will boost com­merce and pre­serve and pro­tect the vital­i­ty of our town for gen­er­a­tions to come.

History

(Information for the con­tent of this sec­tion was gleaned from the mem­o­ries of Chuck Witt, who served on the board of Main Street Winchester, along with arti­cles from the Winchester Sun and the web­site of Winchester First.)

Main Street Winchester, orig­i­nal­ly estab­lished as Winchester First, was formed in 1996 dur­ing the tenure of Mayor Gene Kincaid and met for many years in the board­room of the Clark County Bank on West Lexington Avenue before mov­ing to the Chamber of Commerce Offices and then to City Hall.

In 2022, Main Street Winchester was dis­solved and re-insti­tut­ed once again as Winchester First, this time as a depart­ment with­in city gov­ern­ment with a full-time director.

MSW was focused on help­ing to rein­vig­o­rate the down­town area. The board was able to estab­lish a fund that was made avail­able to down­town prop­er­ty own­ers on a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry basis as a means of upgrad­ing properties.

In 2015 (or 2017, depend­ing on the source), a study was per­formed by CityVisions and fund­ed by local gov­ern­ments and Clark County Community Foundation that result­ed in a long-term mas­ter plan for the down­town area. The study was great­ly facil­i­tat­ed by the efforts of the late Todd Denham, for­mer direc­tor of the Industrial Development Authority, and con­cen­trat­ed pri­mar­i­ly on a major rede­vel­op­ment of the high side of South Main Street. It was designed to be an incre­men­tal pro­gram, one which could be accom­plished in phas­es. Some of the pro­pos­als of that mas­ter plan have been imple­ment­ed, but only on a very lim­it­ed basis, such as some seat­ing areas estab­lished out­side businesses.

In 2021 MSW began a mod­est pro­gram of “artis­tic cross­walks,” large­ly as a result of the refusal of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to allow more defined pedes­tri­an cross­walks along Main Street and West Lexington Avenue. The city can pro­vide these artis­tic cross­walks at inter­sec­tions that are not on state-des­ig­nat­ed road­ways, such as the side streets.

The 2015 mas­ter plan fol­lowed a study done in 1976, fund­ed by the Bluegrass Area Development District, which pri­mar­i­ly focused on main­tain­ing the his­toric char­ac­ter of down­town but did not address many aspects of the prob­lems of the high side. However, the 1976 study did pro­vide a pro­to­typ­i­cal down­town sign ordi­nance, many of whose pro­vi­sions were incor­po­rat­ed into the lat­er ordinances.

MSW has also been involved in pro­vid­ing side­walk ameni­ties such as bench­es, bicy­cle racks, and planters.

Since the 2022 reor­ga­ni­za­tion, Winchester First has estab­lished a new busi­ness stipend grant designed to encour­age busi­ness­es to open in the down­town his­toric dis­trict. Funded by the Downtown Development Investment Fund, the grants assist new busi­ness own­ers with rent or mort­gage and util­i­ty pay­ments dur­ing the first two years of business.

Another grant pro­gram, the Historic District Retail Kick-Start grant, is designed to assist down­town busi­ness­es with expens­es, includ­ing adver­tis­ing, fix­tures, and equip­ment not cov­ered by oth­er grants. 

For down­town build­ing own­ers, oth­er grants and avail­able to assist with ren­o­va­tions and oth­er improve­ments to build­ings in the down­town area.