The Centralia welcome sign is displayed next to the viaduct Friday afternoon in Centralia.
The city of Centralia took the next step toward a potential multi-million dollar streetscaping effort Tuesday when the city council approved a $67,470 contract with SCJ Alliance for the design and planning phase of the project.
A proposed schedule for the next six months includes multiple community workshops and open houses hosted by SCJ Alliance to gather feedback as it develops concepts for how to reshape the main roadways connecting Interstate 5 with downtown Centralia.
Representatives from the civil engineering and architecture firm took a similar approach to the upcoming redesign of Borst Avenue, which is scheduled to take place this summer following years of collaborative effort between stakeholders.
“One of the things we absolutely loved was how SCJ worked so closely with all the residents along Borst Avenue when they did those designs,” said Emil Pierson, community development director for Centralia. “We’re hoping to see the same things happen on the roads from Mellen (Street), Harrison (Avenue), into downtown. We love their track record, love what they’ve done with Borst Avenue, and want to see the same things applied to these corridors.”
Pierson and City Manager Rob Hill proposed about 3.5 miles of streetscape work on six well-worn stretches of roads at a Nov. 2018 meeting of the council. The duo pitched it as a way to draw more recreational and commercial interest to downtown Centralia by installing more visually appealing streetlights, wayfaring signs and other aesthetic improvements.
Such a project would cost an estimated $3 million, not including the potential to use Real Estate Excise Tax funds to pay off remaining debt on a downtown streetscaping project completed in 2003 and up to $500,000 of future sales tax revenues for the purchase of needed properties or rights-of-way.
Hill and Pierson proposed financing the project by taking out a $4 million bond. The $1 million not earmarked for streetscaping would be used to backfill a loan given by the city to the nonprofit working to restore and reopen the Fox Theatre.
Councilors voted at the November meeting to have city staff prepare documents related to the bond, but have not taken action related to the project aside from approving the SCJ contract on Tuesday.
“There’s no doubt that Centralia is about to explode,” Mayor Pro-tem Max Vogt said in November. “It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t think so.”
The draft schedule submitted by SCJ Alliance as part of the contract documents maps out how it hopes to present a final set of design concepts to the city council by the end of the summer.
A city council workshop, two public open houses, two online surveys and the creation of a project website are some of the specifics outlined in the proposal.
Elisabeth Wooten, a senior transportation planner for SCJ, said that while the streetscaping project would take place on a different scale than the Borst Avenue redesign, it’s a similar process to get from initial ideas to putting a shovel in the ground.
“This is really about getting people from the highway into the downtown areas of Centralia,” Wooten said. “So, it’s a different purpose than Borst, which is really about safety for the students and community that lives there. Wayfinding will probably more prominent with this project, for example. This is about better connectivity for the people.”
Aerial photos marking different aspects of the proposed project show some areas, like Harrison Avenue from Johnson Road to the opposite side of I-5, would be subject to less of an overhaul than others.
Improvements made on the Mellen Street corridor from I-5 to Tower Avenue may include the removal of an existing “Centralia Welcomes you” sign at the intersection of Alder Street and West Cherry Street. It and the building on the same property would be taken down and replaced by new signage installed at the I-5 interchanges off Mellen Street (exit 81) and Harrison Avenue (exit 82).
“Each section, as (SCJ Alliance) plans and works, each section will have different design characteristics,” Pierson said. “There will be some things that carry through from one to another and others that are specific to a certain area.”
