Have you Time-Traveled lately? You don’t have to be Marty McFly or Dr. Who to find portals through space and time. Visiting the past is as simple as logging on to the internet. Main Street – as we know it – will require some time-teleporting to view it after this evening.
I realized that Friday is the last day for Main Street in Broken Arrow. Oh, it will still be around, but this afternoon is anticipated to be the last in its current configuration. To document the deal, I decided to take a picture, and stepped out past the parking spaces and into traffic, which is the Broken Arrow equivalent of swimming with sharks. (I won’t go into my crosswalk incident of the other afternoon, except to point out that the light was green for me, red for the two trucks, and that I survived it.) As you can see in the image, I waited until cars were stopped at the far light ahead (and at Broadway behind me) to give myself a fighting chance of survival.
Hopefully, a thick layer of auto-shark-repellent will go into the concrete mix when the street alteration begins on Monday. Personally, I think it would be fantastic if some of the cars that are pushing 50 mph through downtown would slow down long enough to take in the signs and stores and shops. Replacing the two inner lanes of traffic with a single, turn-only lane will require a little more attentiveness regarding cars backing out of parking spaces. It should slow the traffic some, as well.
The Main Street Expressway – running from 71st to 91st (of course, BA calls them Kenosha and Washington) – should be a thing of the past after this weekend. That’s just peachy with me. The orange barrels and traffic cones that will go up when work begins on Monday will eventually be gone. The Rose District that should begin blooming in the fall will be more conducive to walking around without requiring an accidental death rider on your insurance policy.
The concept drawings of the finished arts and entertainment district are beautiful. They’ve planned a mid-block crosswalk between Commercial and Dallas in addition to the wider sidewalks that will accommodate some shopper-amenities like benches and seats. Some of the restaurants will be able to have outdoor seating (some already do…). There will be landscaping with an irrigation system to keep the plants green, instead of turning toasty-brown like they all did last summer from lack of rain. Angled parking will remain, but the four-lane thoroughfare will be reduced to two-with-a-center-turn from College to Fort Worth streets.
Naturally, there are people who feel strongly about the proposed alteration. Change of any sort is generally met with anxiety (excepting, perhaps, pocket change). Here’s a taste of truth, though. For the past decade or so, downtown BA has been treading the commercial water, with an ever-changing list of store names. Going in and out of business. Without a fundamental and base-level change, that cycle will only continue to repeat.
That’s why I’m excited to be in the Rose District and will tolerate the inevitable difficulties associated with store-front road construction. Growing the Rose District will be a little like growing the actual flowers: you’ve got to start with viable seeds and soil to have any expectation of seeing beautiful results. It will take a little nurturing and some amount of patience. In the end, the results should exceed the efforts by far.
(You’ll notice that I got through that entire paragraph without drawing a single fertilizer-compost-or-alternative reference.)
Speedy drivers will still be able to shoot down the ol’ Main Street Expressway. It’s as easy as taking the Google Earth internet onramp and cruising along with those old and dated images, where our little downtown bookstore is still visible as Francy Law Firm.
If we could only roll back fuel prices to earlier times, too…
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main, Broken Arrow OK!
