It’s been two years since Carson Street was torn up through downtown and rebuilt with wider sidewalks. The project turned out to be a huge success, and despite the naysayers has made the downtown corridor a much more attractive place. Now the city is giving the same treatment to a stretch of Curry Street, one block over. It’s not going to be as extensive as the Carson Street makeover was. Where that covered 11 blocks, all the way from Fifth Street to Washington Street, the Curry project is much more modest.

This summer they will be removing the asphalt and sidewalks from four blocks of Curry Street, between Musser and Robinson Streets, and doing a complete replacement. This is also the stretch of Curry that has already been one-way-only traffic, with a lot of on-street parking, so there are not going to be a lot of changes in the layout of the street.

But the sidewalks are supposed to be widened a bit, with bulbouts at each corner to make the crosswalks as short as possible. New asphalt and new concrete will replace everything that’s currently cracked and broken. And the whole street will be much more walkable, even though Curry Street was already way ahead of Carson Street in that regard.

The end result will make Curry Street, for these five blocks, feel like part of a compatible neighborhood to all the new changes on Carson Street. And it should also go along with the new building at 308 N. Curry, which should be opening this year.

I went downtown the day before construction started, just as I did with Carson Street, to get a few “before” photos of Curry Street. Some of these blocks are already very attractive, so it will be nice to see how much they can be improved.

The city is making an effort to work with the businesses along Curry Street to make sure they can still be accessed during construction. So even if the street is torn up, don’t let that keep you away from downtown this summer.