Council votes to revamp Third Avenue in ML

No changes set in stone yet Option to come back and tinker still open

MOSES LAKE What many hope is a new beginning for Third Avenue ended with an ovation.

The city council unanimously voted to support a design that changes the look of the avenue, bringing wider sidewalks, extended curbs and more parallel parking. The decision was greeted with applause by most of the crowd at Tuesday s city council meeting, although a degree of opposition remains.

Nevertheless, Mayor Ron Covey was pleased with the swift decision.

Downtown is dying on the vine, he said. We have to make some changes.

Before its decision, a series of study sessions had yielded two models for the council to choose from. Although both models offered the city about the same amount of parking, the model the city picked will afford the city about six feet more of sidewalk, three feet on each side of Third Avenue.

The overall span of the changes has not been decided, nor are these changes set in stone, Covey said.

We haven t decided from where to where (this will go), Covey said. But this is what we want it to look like.

The move leaves open the council s option to come back and tinker with some of these decisions.

Now that the city council has made a choice, the next step is for city staff to bring back numbers telling how much that choice will cost the city and how it can pay for it. The second step will be to decide which areas of the city s choice, be it sidewalks, extended curbs, parking, etc., can be worked on first with the monies available.

Covey discounted going to the general public for money, although he left open the possibility of talking to business owners.

People for and against the projects spoke throughout the meeting, with some praising the efforts and others lambasting the spending of money on beautifying the city during tough economic times and with other city departments either understaffed or under-resourced.

Covey said he understood the dissent, adding that several other construction projects in the city encountered opposition at first, such as the Aquatic Center.

For now, the ball is in city staff s court and it s their turn to say how much it will cost to turn Third Avenue into a pedestrian-friendly destination instead of a way to get somewhere else.

Business owner Greg Strickland told the council. When people ask Where do I go? you can say Wal-Mart anywhere. We can create something that is uniquely Moses Lake.