Downtown Williston was abuzz Tuesday night as more than 70 residents, business owners and city officials came together to envision a future for the city’s historic district.
Armed with colored makers, large pads of paper and maps of the city, two planners from Midwest-based RDG Planning Design called for community engagement and urged attendees to share ideas and priorities as they kicked off a public meeting and community roundtable to discuss the Downtown Development Master Plan, which was hosted by the city’s planning department.
“You’re going to help us tonight at the beginning stages of this process developing the downtown plan,” RDG Principal Martin Shukert said. “For the next few months, we really are in a way the spokespeople for your ideas and see this project at this stage as being very much as a collaboration and partnership.”
Before attendees divided into eight small groups to let their inner planner dream big, Shukert laid out a three-prong plan for downtown Williston. The Downtown Reconstruction Project, now in engineering design, aims to rebuild infrastructure (water/sewer) and replace sidewalks, curb/gutter and street pavement on Main Street (and may include Broadway). The Downtown Streetscape Plan, prepared by Bismark-based KLJ, calls for enhancements on and above the street and sidewalk surface that includes lighting, signage and landscaping. The master plan takes a much broader approach, according to Shukert, and looks at markets, strategies, development projects, parking, connections and surrounding neighborhoods.
“Master plan looks at overall framework that deals with all of these different systems, activities, perspectives, the economics of business and land use mixes and zoning that all have something to do with what a downtown looks like and how it develops over the years,” Shukert said.
RDG Downtown Planner and Partner Cory Scott said the firm has worked in downtown communities throughout the Midwest and some of the Rocky Mountain States, with populations ranging from 900 to 400,000.
“With the oil boom, that brings a lot of interest and all eyes are on Williston — it brings a lot of opportunity. With the number of people that are coming in to town for business, what can we do to improve the quality of life and enjoyment of the city and retain some of the people that are here and find Williston their home,” Scott said.
The firm’s design concepts for communities such as Detroit Lakes, Minn., and Pella, Iowa were presented and discussed to show how downtown areas can be transformed. Because of the Dutch influence in Pella, the idea of replicating the country’s canals resulted in an mixed-use project replete with an urban canal, restaurants, a movie theater, housing and a hotel.
But for two residents of Williston, the talk smacked of broken promises and missed opportunities after the last oil boom.
“When are the people that are directly involved in this process going to feel comfortable and stand up and say what they really feel,” said Lloyd Ashton, a longtime resident and owner of Hedderichs on Main Street. “The outsiders are coming here and talking to us from all over the world. … We’ve seen all this stuff before.”
Ashton and another resident and business owner, Rex Byerly, asked who would pay for the project, concerned they and others would have to “pick up the tab,” similar to what they experienced after the last boom.
“First of all, we have no guarantees that the oil boom will stay here,” Mayor Ward Koeser said, adding the city is taking a different approach this time by not putting a lot of the tax burden on the taxpayer.
Shukert, in response to Ashton and Byerly’s comments regarding cost, said the funding sources for the master plan are currently unknown and hinge upon what grows out of the process.
“The trick and art of developing this type of plan is putting together something where the benefits are clear and the costs, to the degree that they exist, are equitably distributed among the community that’s benefiting,” he said.
Koeser said the city has told the state that it needs to be involved this time and to developers, the message is: “You have to pay your own way.”
“We didn’t do that the last go-around, so I think we’re taking actions that will protect us. We’ve got to take calculated risks, and all we’re doing today is looking at ideas and then people will process that and they’ll say ‘This is doable, this isn’t doable,’” Koeser said.
For a majority of the participants, the community roundtable allowed them to weigh in with their concerns and excitement as well.
“I really want to see it revitalized. I really enjoy doing downtown, and I want to see it expanded,” Karlyne Mickolio explained as she watched Cooks on Main owner Angela DeMaris write down comments and ideas from their group’s discussion, which included a skate zone, bike racks and lanes and outdoor movies.
Daily Addiction owners Laura and Trevor Ward came to show their support for the master plan. Laura has lived in Williston for more than a decade and said they opened their coffee on Main Street in 2009. Trevor, a native, said he wanted to “get some insight into the planning and have a voice in the process of implementation.”
After each group had an opportunity to identify issues, priorities and projects for the downtown area, the participants reconvened to share their findings. Concerns ranged from parking and the new senior location to the strip clubs and the truck bypass. Priorities included attracting more retail and restaurants (the mention of a chocolate store elicited smiles), adding green space and enhancing the railroad park and working to make it a destination, though one resident said this may be a challenge due to the waterways and all of the goods and commodities that are transported via the railway. Project ideas such as an apartment complex, development of the downtown skyline and lighting and signage were noted by several of the groups.
Shukert said the firm is doing a lot of survey to determine the current condition in downtown Williston. In May, all of the parking spaces were counted and buildings were photographed.
“Putting together a road map results in an analysis of where we are, a concept of where we want to be in the future and a detail framework that tells us how we’re going to get there,” Shukert said. “Our entire focus is how do we make downtown Williston a strong, growing market center core for this rapidly growing community. … How do you take the historical town center of a town of about 15,000 people and adapt that to the needs of a town that’s growing and fast-forwarding to 50,000 and 60,000 people?
The process will go on for a period of eight months, Shukert said. In mid-July, development concepts will be explored over a three-day design studio and then again in August. Both Shukert and Scott urged participants to use the community engagement website at www.plandowntownwilliston.com to suggest ideas, leave comments and vote for ideas.
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