Cascade Avenue to get a facelift

Cascade Avenue is the heart of downtown Sisters. If all the funding aligns, a $4.5-million project will improve the roadway and make the avenue a more hospitable place for pedestrians to stroll and enjoy the atmosphere.

"The nicest part is putting in the benches, the street lighting, the trees; things that make people want to hang out and relax and spend time in downtown Sisters," said Mike Darling, Oregon Department of Transportation project manager for the Cascade Avenue Improvement Project. "That is the icing on the cake that is really going to change the character of the look and feel (of downtown Sisters); that is an important part of the project."

City staff believes that the project will be a big benefit to Sisters' bottom line.

"I think people will be amazed at how (this project) is going to improve the downtown economics," said Pauline Hardie, Sisters' community development director. "I believe it is going to attract businesses, it is going to attract people . . . it will revitalize downtown; with wider sidewalks, people are going to be way more comfortable on the sidewalks and with tree-lined streets."

Currently the downtown sidewalks are four- to six-feet wide. At the completion of the project all sidewalks will be eight feet wide except from Oak to Pine, where they will be nine-feet wide.

Hardie and Darling have been aggressively "chasing the funds" needed to complete this renovation project - the first phase of the city's 20-year Transportation System Plan (TSP). First they won a grant to fund the consulting work to develop the various alternative "cityscapes" that have been presented at various city workshops and displayed in city hall ($70,000).

Then they were successful in securing grants to the tune of $615,000 and $1,139,000, which will more than cover the completion of the Main Avenue portion of this overall project. The city's required contribution will be on the order of $200,000.

Darling and Hardie have a high level of confidence that they will get at least a significant portion of a $1.6-million Federal Public Lands grant, which, combined with some ODOT "flex" funding, would be enough to complete the Cascade Avenue Improvement Project as planned. This grant will be awarded in early fall.

Darling said he has been asked why so much money should be spent on such a project in hard economic times.

"First of all we are going to be putting people to work," he said. "With the construction there will be 15 to 18 family-wage jobs. The contractors will be hanging out and spending money in Sisters for about a year."

Darling explained that only about 10 to 12 percent of the money will be going to the "vertical landscape" - benches, trees, lighting fixtures, bike stands and trash containers. The bulk of the money will be spent "from the sidewalks down."

"We are not just re-paving the highway, we are rebuilding the highway. Portions of the new highway (Cascade) will be nine inches lower than they are now," said Darling.

With wider sidewalks and properly graded streets, Cascade Avenue will have a whole new look.

Much of the funding for the Cascade project comes from federal and state set-asides for bike and pedestrian improvements. Cascade Avenue is an officially designated freight route. This designation requires a certain width of road, and parallel parking. One of the requirements of the grants was to move bicycle traffic off of Cascade Avenue. That move is being accomplished by adding designated (painted) bike lanes to Main Avenue. However, face-in diagonal parking is not allowed with bike lanes, so Main Avenue will have diagonal back-in parking, which has been a contested issue in past hearings and workshops.

To get further community input, the consultants will return to Sisters in late July. At that time they will be offering choices on benches, trees, light fixtures, and the like. From earlier public input they have narrowed the streetscape design down to a combination of a "modernized" 1880s look and a "ski town" look.

Even if the funding is not immediately in place, ODOT is completing the design for the full $4.5-million project. In the summer of 2012 Darling will take a look at the funds available, and trim back the project to fit the monies available at that time. Even if all the bells and whistles are not funded by the time the shovels hit the dirt in the fall of 2012, the balance of the project will be on the shelf - approved, designed and awaiting the balance of the funds.

With the Cascade Avenue project complete, the second phase of the Sisters TSP will include upgrading the designated alternative route along Barclay Avenue to state standards to make it more attractive to through traffic, especially big trucks. The third phase of the Sisters TSP will include adding controlled intersections at both ends of the alternate route (either lights or roundabouts).

Go to www.nuggetnews.com for a link to the ODOT site to follow the progress on this project, and see a complete description of the project.