Elgin has been awarded a $60,000 GM on Main grant to design a pedestrian crosswalk and related pedestrian-safety work connecting the city’s older park and a new park, city officials said on the City of Elgin’s 78620/78621 Live podcast. Christina Alvarez, Main Street manager, described the project as both a pedestrian-safety effort and an attempt “to kind of unify 2 formerly segregated parts of town.”

The grant-funded project matters because residents and business owners reported children running between the two parks across a busy area, creating safety concerns. "We had been getting some reports from businesses, seeing children dart from the old park to the new park and concerns about pedestrian safety," Alvarez said, adding the city is calling the effort the “crosswalk community.”

Alvarez said the Main Street program is in the design phase and will host a community workshop at the Clever Tiger at the end of the month so residents can review and vote on design options. "We do have a tight turnaround. It has to be complete by November 30," she said. City staff also noted interim reporting deadlines: a progress report is due July 31, another report in September and a final report by Nov. 30.

Alvarez placed the crosswalk project in the context of broader downtown revitalization. She said Main Street is “preservation based economic development,” noted downtown storefronts are about 96% occupied and that roughly 200 people live downtown. She highlighted new and incoming businesses, including a Things Celtic shop relocating from Austin/Dublin-area locations and a kettle-corn vendor she said will soon open.

The podcast also described a recently established Depot District, which the city adopted late last year to make select downtown activities easier to manage and to promote tourism. Alvarez said the Depot District allows open-container events downtown under rules the city enforces (the podcast advised the city uses plastic cups or cans for open-container use during events).

City staff asked residents who cannot attend the workshop to use an online community questionnaire and a Facebook poll linked from the city’s Visit Elgin page to provide design input. Alvarez said the design will consider lower-maintenance materials so the city will not incur ongoing high maintenance costs, and that the schools will be included in pedestrian-safety education tied to the project.

For more information and links to the questionnaire and poll, the podcast directed listeners to the Visit Elgin page and to the upcoming community workshop at the Clever Tiger, where design options will be posted for public comment and voting.