The City Council’s Downtown Committee has agreed to recommend hiring an East Coast consultant to study downtown road improvements and to help get federal funds to pay for the work.
The committee is recommending the city pay $10,000 toward the cost of the study, while the other $5,000 would come from the Friends of Downtown, which solicited the help of Robert Burco, a research associate at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.
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Ald. Sue Klinkhamer said Burco’s study, if approved, probably would not change the city’s support of the state Transportation Department’s $6.5 million planned improvement of Main Street in 1996.
“We can still justify the Main Street project,” said Klinkhamer, Downtown Committee chairwoman. “If anything, this proposed study expands the scope and makes people realize there’s more to the problem than just this little section of Main Street.”
Friends of Downtown, a pro-business organization that formed last year, says the state’s plan to widen lanes on Main Street, or Illinois Highway 64, would eliminate some on-street parking and sidewalks.
Friends of Downtown says it expects Burco’s study to say that widening Illinois 64 through the heart of downtown would hurt businesses.