Streetscape Design Improvement Project
City of Watertown Planning
Watertown, NY
The chosen firm will ideally have a strong urban design background with demonstrated previous experience in placemaking. Additionally, a licensed professional engineer, architect or landscape architect must certify final design and construction documents.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION The City of Watertown strives to encourage pedestrian activity downtown, preserving its historic character while providing vibrant, welcoming public spaces that complement the diversity of surrounding land uses. The existing streetscapes bear many scars of urban renewal, which prioritized the automobile over other modes, and to the detriment of aesthetics and the urban fabric.
The successful project, when implemented, will create unique visual identities on the subject streets and support the downtown as a destination in its own right, not merely as a thoroughfare. This project will continue the process of reclaiming downtown Watertown from the automobile, and make it a place for people once again.
Improvements, once complete, would help to achieve the following goals:
- Slow vehicular traffic
- Enhance pedestrian comfort, safety and access
- Enhance bicycle comfort, safety and access
- Provide complete ADA accessibility
- Improve pedestrian level lighting
- Identify locations for public art
- Strengthen economic vitality
- Provide outdoor space for dining and business
- Assure safe, clearly identified, consistent parking options
An additional priority will be enhancing the Roswell P. Flower monument in the median of Washington Street, a two-way radial arterial street that emanates south from Public Square. As a historic piece of public art, erected in 1902, the statue is notable landmark in downtown Watertown.
However, its location makes it vulnerable to vehicular crashes, and the City seeks design improvements that will safeguard the monument from surrounding traffic flows while preserving its historic character and its placemaking role in its current setting.
One other opportunity for evaluation is Lachenauer Plaza, an underutilized flatiron park at the confluence of Arsenal and Court Streets, and whether any opportunities exist within the scope of this project to activate that space and enhance its role in the public realm.