Lights fest illuminates congestion downtown By Tom Hayden
Published by news-press.com on December 06, 2005
Shut down a road and get a taste of the future.
A downtown section of Cape Coral Parkway was closed for about 12 hours Saturday for what was a very successful Holiday Festival of Lights event.
As I watched kids fire snowballs at targets and anything else that moved while nearby restaurants packed 'em in, I couldn't help but glance over to the Community Redevelopment Agency tent.
Under the canvas, CRA executive director Suzanne Kuehn and other officials were explaining to people how $1 billion worth of projects planned for downtown will make life better for the city.
"Some of the property owners in the area, we're really excited about what was happening. Some wanted to be investors in the area," Kuehn said. Others, Kuehn said, worried their properties might be bulldozed to make room for the 14 new projects.
The Festival of Lights provides a perfect sampler to what will be the CRA's biggest headaches — parking, traffic and pedestrians. You bring in an additional 10,000 to 15,000 people, try to park them and provide them a place to walk. No easy task for our downtown.
There currently are not enough parking spaces close to downtown to comfortably handle big events, let alone hundreds of new shops, restaurants and a downtown residential community that figures to go from 2,000 to 11,000 living in the new condos or apartments.
There has been foolish talk in the past about closing down a section of the parkway in front of the downtown businesses to make it easier for pedestrians to maneuver while routing traffic along side streets.
Saturday proved that wouldn't work. The parkway was closed between Southeast 15th Avenue and Leonard Street and traffic was detoured along Southeast 47th Terrace. That street resembled a parking lot from about 5 to 9 p.m. because of the bumper-to-bumper mess.
The only thing that will turn downtown into a bonafide place for people to enjoy the day will be parking structures capable of handling the extra load and some kind of sidewalk plan that will make it easier for people to navigate the streets without getting killed.
A traffic study, currently being developed, will help provide the CRA with answers on how to handle the extra load of people and cars.
Early returns from the study say it is possible to improve the flow of traffic with better synchronization of the traffic lights. Widening the Cape Coral Bridge also is an option to help with that circulation.
The traffic study probably won't be completed until summer 2006, but there will be a public input meetings in either January or February.
The CRA isn't waiting for all these new projects to change the face of downtown. It wants to change the image now.
There is a meeting Wednesday with downtown business owners to come up with ideas to market the area as a downtown shopping and dining district.
The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Cape Coral Association of Realtors building at 918 S.E. 46th Lane.
The CRA wants more events downtown to gear up for its future. Some ideas already on the table are a wine tasting and hors d'oeuvres night, a jazz night, bed race and parade, street painting contest for children, taste of downtown food festival and monthly sidewalk sales.
The Cape needs a destination area and the downtown can provide that. Solving the traffic and parking headaches will determine whether the downtown's destiny is one of success or failure.
— Tom Hayden is Cape Coral editor of The News-Press.
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