I got out this weekend to look at how they’re coming with the sidewalks downtown. The sidewalks north of Robinson are basically done, so let’s look a bit south, between Robinson and Musser. Here the sidewalks are in varying stages of doneness, from dirt and pouring curbs to creating the landscaping walls to being just about finished.
Near Musser the curbs and gutters haven’t even been poured yet, the dirt is just being prepped.
Further north between Proctor and Spear the curbs and gutters are in, and at some corners the landscaping walls are going up.
They are doing extra special work at Telegraph and Carson, with larger bulb-out sidewalks and walls creating a distinctive corner.
They are also putting bulb-outs at Carson and Spear. Probably all of these minor side streets along this stretch will end up having them, since the streets are one-way anyway.
This tree seems like it is being saved as the sidewalk takes shape around it.
And here between Robinson and Spear we have the first finished parking spot. On-street parking coming back to Carson Street has been a component of this project since it was first dreamed up over a dozen years ago. The plan has changed over the years, though, as the idea of people blocking traffic as they tried to parallel park seemed to cause more problems than it solved. They worked around this by making the parking spaces longer, so they could be pull-in-pull-out spots. They also reduced the number of spots to make more room for landscaping. The end result is that there’s not very much on-street parking on Carson Street at all, only a couple dozen spots along the whole stretch. The parking will look like this, concrete aprons to make it distinctive from the road. The curbs are angled to allow cars to just pull in and pull out, and this spot looks like it can probably hold 2 cars. And even where there’s a parking spot, the sidewalks are still wider than they used to be before construction started.
They keep on going, and we should see the sidewalks along this part of the road coming together quickly this month.
