Businesses, residents and city of Davis workers presented their proposals for G Street renovations
By HANNAH SCHRADER — city@theaggie.org
On Oct. 4, the city of Davis held a public workshop to gather community input on G Street. The street has prohibited the use of motor vehicles since June of 2020, originally in an effort to fulfill the increased demand for outdoor seating as a result of the pandemic.
The business community has shown concern about the temporary structures that were created to allow for more outdoor seating. As a result, in Jan. of 2023, the Davis City Council approved the G Street redesign project.
The community gathering was held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on G Street in order to get feedback from residents as to ways in which G Street could be improved.
Davis Vice Mayor Josh Chapman was also in attendance at the gathering and gave some insight about what the city aims to gain from putting on this gathering.
“We’re really looking to get some input on a couple different things, and the first one is really how we’re going to use the space now that it’s been closed to automobile traffic,” Chapman said. “[We’re] trying to figure out what the mix of available space for the businesses to possibly leave for dining or other uses versus just public spaces for use by the community is.”
Chapman discussed the possible timeline of this project, hoping for construction to begin sometime next year.
“The schedule moving forward would be we collect community input at this meeting and then our design [team] is going to go back and come up with some final concepts and layouts,” Chapman said. “We’ll be taking that to the city council early next year. Once the council [has] provided their input and [approval], we’ll go to final design and hopefully construction next year.”
The arts and culture manager for the city of Davis, Rachel Hartsough, spoke briefly on the proposed ways in which art could be used to enhance G Street which the public was able to vote on during the community meeting.
“We did a lot of research on similar spaces that were carfree that were focused more on the bicycle, pedestrian, kind of promenade type spaces,” Hartsough said. “These were some of the features that we saw in other cities that we thought were great examples of things that made the space useable, fun, flexible [and] friendly to different ages and demographics within the community.”
The proposed art installations, including different kinds of murals, information kiosks and other whimsical structures, were printed on a poster board and citizens attending the meeting were able to put a sticker on the art style and amenities they most preferred.
“It’s more of capturing what the community is most interested in and then trying to find the best match for that with our artists [in Davis],” Hartsough stated.
Marcus Marino, president and CEO of Design M Group, a full-service real estate firm, also attended the community meeting with a plan for changes he would like to see on G Street.
“I saw what the city was originally talking about doing and I felt that they were on the wrong path and that I had a better solution to it, so I’ve drawn this up,” Marino said. “The major differences that I’m proposing are a sign on each end of the block, which would be an homage to the original Davis Arch. […] I have a simpler solution to the parking area that’s standing in the block of these parking spaces and [is] now striped this way because it’s a two-way street. I propose just repainting the stripes this way and making it a one-way street. […] This could be done in a weekend for minimal cost and eliminates the issue that we have now.”
Written by: Hannah Schrader — city@theaggie.org
