The new Broadway Westport Council board of directors was elected last night at the group’s annual meeting.
It has been a momentous year for Broadway Boulevard, according to Broadway Westport Council President Kirk Isenhour. He addressed business owners and others last night at the council’s annual meeting.
“There’s been an amazing difference in the last five or six years,” Isenhour said. With the new development, especially new apartments being added to the Broadway corridor, “we need to address things like parking, infrastructure, and taking care of the businesses that already exist here.”
The Broadway Westport Council has been working to create a Community Improvement District, which is expected to be up and running by the end of 2016.
The group celebrated by tasting food from various restaurants along Broadway, including several new venues expected to open soon.
The council works to improve the area from Pershing Road to 46th Terrace and from Southwest Trafficway to Main Street as a desirable place to live, work and do business.
For personal reasons, I would love to see this corridor improved as I live abreast of it. Truth is, if the idea that the trolley car should service the populace of the city and not be just a vehicle for tourism, then it should make a turn at Union Station, making it’s way right to the front door of the Plaza down the Midtown Broadway corridor. We are adding huge numbers of apartments down this path with the new Manor Square Apartment complex, the Opus Project, and the MGE building project. These projects alone are going to create more than a thousand new units directly adjacent this path, which is not the case along Main from Union Station south to the Plaza. The density of units along Broadway is going to become a serious issue as car traffic is already a difficult situation throughout Westport. I live in Midtown and see all these new apartments as a car, bike and pedestrian nightmare unless they figure out a way to handle all the new traffic these new building projects will bring into the area. Trolley service directly into the heart of it might help. Beyond all that, the CID should address the infrastructure. My hope is that eventually, we”ll see a wrecking ball taken to most of the structures between Westport Rd and the Valentine and Chatham apartment buildings, Nearly every other building is blight with ugly ad signboards latched above the roof lines of used up structures (there are a few notable exceptions). This corridor needs new sidewalks, curbs, new tree specimens that scale high above the structures, and not visually block the most beautiful structures that remain, such as the Congress and Barclay buildings. Remove the dangerous bump outs that create a sight line block for emerging vehicles… the list goes on. Business zoning regulation would go a long way to improve the situation as well. Would be nice if all the Vape buildings painted crude colors with the strobing lights were controlled. Broadway has never looked worse and its about time it was handled properly by the city. Walgreens cut their grass for the first time this year about a week back after it had gotten over 2 feet high with thistles; four months of the city doing nothing ;nice touch. Getting the bus stop removed at the intersection of 39th and Broadway would help. Note the beer cans, garbage, and the drugged out individuals that camp out there to accost the Walgreens shoppers on a daily basis. Once many of these issues are handled properly, this corridor might see a real renaissance. The only corridor worse in Midtown than Broadway would be 39th st from Main all the way to the Locarno apartments, well past Southwest trafficway; with all the ugly and discordant mid-century infill and power lines running amok. Once these two streets are handled with an eye to bringing beauty back to these commercial corridors, then we will have succeeded in bringing Midtown back.