Painting the town

QUINCY — The downtown project designed to spruce up Quincy’s Central Avenue South started at street level. Artwork, literally at the street level, was painted on Central Avenue in Quincy based on plans to spruce up downtown.

“What really inspired it was the revitalization plan that the city of Quincy has, which mentioned adding a mural to these intersections, as well as some gateway features,” Marissa Lopez of the Better Block Foundation said.

Volunteers and employees of a Dallas-based organization were out in the middle of Central Avenue Thursday morning, carefully taping off squares and triangles in the intersection at C Street SE and Central. Paint rollers in hand, volunteers and Better Block employees were filling in the design with bright orange and blue, yellow and green paint. The crews spent part of Wednesday afternoon installing signs and sculptures at three downtown intersections. Lopez said the company was in Quincy a couple of years ago, painting the street along B Street SE and sponsoring the first B Street block party. The company was hired for the return project.

The volunteers and Better Block crew painted all or part of the intersections of Central Avenue and B Street, C Street and D Street, and the crosswalk at E Street SE.

“(Wednesday) we painted D Street, we’re focusing on C Street right now,” Lopez said Thursday morning.

The gateway features include a “Quincy” sign at each end of the project along Central, and sculptures featuring a Q at most corners of the intervening intersections.

Quincy Valley Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Cari Mathews said the wooden sculptures show people the possibilities of the downtown area.

“They’re kind of temporary, just to give inspiration for what these things could be,” Mathews said.

The street design also featured a Q, one at each corner in fact. It was intricate enough that the crew laying it out had to make some adjustments, removing some of the tape to reshape certain design elements. Better Block employee Torrie Peterson told fellow employee Krista Nightengale she had devised a system for removing the tape.

“You’ve got to grab it from both sides,” Peterson said.

“Like life,” Nightengale said,

Better Block worked with the Chamber and Microsoft on the project, and Mathews was out in the street with a paint roller Thursday.

“I think we want the downtown businesses to see what it can be, give them inspiration for renovating their storefronts, I guess. Kind of being a cohesive downtown,” she said. “That’s been the vision.”

Volunteer Catalina Blancas, busy wielding a paint roller, said she had seen the concept design.

“And then you see it (on the street) and it’s like, ‘Okay, this is what it looks like.’”

“This is going hand in hand with what the city has planned,” Mathews said.

Quincy city officials commissioned a downtown revitalization plan in 2022, which recommends upgrading the streetscape along Central Avenue.

It turns out it takes a while to paint a street, at least paint a specific design.

“The intersection there took pretty much all day yesterday,” Mathews said, pointing to D Street.

It was chilly and windy Wednesday and Thursday, but Mathews and Blancas said it was a fun project nonetheless.

“It hasn’t been too bad at all,” Mathews said. “We’re glad it’s not raining.”

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.