Champaign City Council and Plaza Concerns

There was a City Council meeting on Tuesday (agenda here and video links here when available). The News-Gazette had an overview today:

Champaign council OKs street designation for black-owned radio station
The city will soon have a road named after the only black-owned radio station east of the Mississippi, WBCP radio.

The honorary designation will apply to the section of North Fourth Street between East Tremont and East Grove streets, west of Douglass Park...

In other business:

— Council members voted to continue planning the downtown plaza project, but it was a close call, with Kyles, Matthew Gladney and Alicia Beck in opposition.

The biggest issue they cited was availability of disabled parking, as well as funding, which is not secured. They also voiced a desire to wait and see what other projects in development will do to downtown.

"Quite frankly, we're not good at accessibility," Beck said. "We also need to plan it so that it will be not just for middle-class white people, and we don't want just middle-class white people coming to our plaza. We want our entire community to be there."

Champaign resident Tonya Weatherly, who spoke during the public-comment period, said the plan may be beautiful, but it's not thinking about people like her.

"Where do I fit in as the poor, struggling single mom that won't ever get to visit this nice area?" she asked. "By the time you get it fixed up fancy, I won't be able to even afford to go there. They talk about renovating this area, while blocks away, people are getting killed."

More at the full article here. More on the plaza  concerns, ideas, and parking in an article yesterday:

Not everyone happy with designs for Champaign's downtown plaza
While 60 to 70 percent of the current parking spots would go away under the proposal, city staff note that there would still be 1,500 spaces within a five-minute walk of the site.

Community input gathered in recent months offered other ideas. Among them: Residents voiced a preference for a space that's "flexible" and has "variability and leisure, seasonality and identity."

Further, the input said it should focus on arts and entrepreneurship and largely offer free activities for people and families. Combined with food vendors, pop-up eateries, light elements and local art, the plaza should become the city's gathering place, proponents say.

The estimated construction costs fall somewhere between $2.5 million and $5.8 million. Add design and development, and the price tag is between $6.8 million and $15 million, though city staffers note that "funding has not been specifically established for the implementation of the plan," and it could take years for the downtown taxing district to raise that much.

More at the full article here including a business concerned that the parking issue will put them out of business.