Auburn’s leaders recently summoned to City Hall their three-member Main Street Urban Design Project team to hear what it has been up to lately.
That is, what have they learned in meetings, what has their research revealed, what are some of their design ideas, and what have Auburn residents had to say in all the interviews about their city’s present and future?
And the team responded with optimism.
“You have a suite of assets that really positions you for an amazing future,” said Brice Maryman, project manager and a landscape architect with SVR Design. “A lot of communities are really hungering for exactly these types of things.”
Things such as:
Auburn’s proximity to Interstate 5, State Route 167 and Highway 18, a positioning, Maryman said, that nets the city, “300,000 400,000 eyeballs going right by downtown Auburn every single day.”
Among the other positives are the Sounder Commuter Train, the history that Auburn, unlike other cities, Maryman said, “hasn’t swept away,” and legacy business like Nelson’s Jewelry.
Maryman praised as well the public sector improvements the City has invested in over the last 10 years, especially the many upgrades to infrastructure that are so attractive to the developers Auburn’s leaders want to attract.
Maryman went on to describe “moments of surprise and delight,” either planned, he said, like the sculptures along Main Street, or unplanned.
One downside, Maryman noted, was how the bed of the old White River as it once went through downtown Auburn continues to settle in places, for instance, under the B Street Plaza.
Next to Maryman were SVR’s Managing Principal, Peg Staeheli, and Katie Idziorek, an urban designer with VIA Architecture & Urban Design. Over the course of recent months, these three have conferred with experts on Auburn’s downtown, with key stakeholders, and recently with customers at the Auburn International Farmers Market.
The idea was to find out what residents think should happen to the downtown in the short and long term, whether there might be room for a continuous canopy of trees, for clustering similar land uses, or for embellishing some storefronts with decorative canopies to jazz up the streetscapes.
“One thing (we have learned in interviews) was that people were pretty consistent in liking downtown. They actually like to come, but they don’t have enough reason to stay, and that was pretty consistent,” Staeheli said.
“On the destination scale, places and programs for people to gather, things to do, whether it’s a playground or public art that’s maybe a different scale than we typically see along Main Street. … Having café seating or sidewalk sales. How do we make that place feel more like a defined, inclusive space where you are supposed to be, where there’s larger public art and people gathering?”
Also, how can the City make its inventory of new and existing building stock more amenable to a public streetscape and a public life?
“You have a lot going on that is really right, that really strongly positions you for the future,” Maryman said. “We often come to other communities and immediately see a lot of the issues. Here, we had to look beneath the surface a little bit to say, ‘OK, there are some places we need to tweak.’ Most important is that you are inviting people into downtown. We read in the paper today that the Trek Apartments are 25 percent pre-leased. The more people you get in the downtown, the better it’s going to be.”
Councilman Rich Wagner aired a concern.
“I agree with you that we have to get people downtown, and we want them to linger there, but there’s a fine line between lingering and loitering,” Wagner said. “The things that you propose for design I hope will take into account that difference, to emphasize the lingering and minimize the loitering.”
