The city of Decatur’s Web site has a copy of the Macon County/Decatur Comprehensive Plan Draft, which has several ideas for improving Decatur and Macon County. This is a 136 page PDF file that tackles economic, park, conservation, historic, transportation, and residential issues facing Decatur. Much of it focuses on beautifying some of Decatur’s main corridors and older neighborhoods, while ensuring future development is in synch with exsisting development. There’s much to digest in the document but the “Decatur Landing” proposal caught my eye. Decatur Landing refers to the Nelson Park and Chandler Park areas along Lake Decatur’s shores. City leaders and developers have tossed around ideas for this area, however I hadn’t seen an actual sketch of what is being considered until I browsed through the plan document. (See page 114 of the draft.) A new hotel, beach and amphitheater is in the draft and would fill what is now Chandler Park, situated directly south of St. Mary’s Hospital and on the corner of Lake Shore Drive and Lost Bridge Road.
Personally, I’ve always thought the Chandler Park area was underutilized and an attractive area for development. I’ve discussed development in this area before on this blog but being a visual learner, it helped to actually see what is being proposed.
I’d encourage every Decaturite take a look at the plan draft to get an idea of what city leaders are considering for the future.
http://decaturil.gov/citygovernment/citydocs/compplandraft.pdf
Kris, thanks for posting this. while I agree with much of it one point I think needs to be relooked at is the “urban densisty zone” On page 36, 37 & 38. Much of the core of the city – the older inner city – is full of vacant lots and vacant properties. I think it is possible that this area could be made more desirable if the density was decreased and the lot size increased…. I also think this might help minimize some problems between neighbors especially the parking scarcity you have in the inner city. The lots are generally so narrow that you cannot park 2 cars in them. I also do not know everyone who contributed to this document but don’t see anyone who I know whose focus is making the older inner-city more desirable…. Obviously I do not know everyone so maybe someone on there has that focus but I would assume anyone with that focus would have been active in CONO… I would have loved to been involved in something like this.
If you look at the map on page 38 the very places people DO NOT seem to want to live or invest are those Urbana density areas.
When I get to page 58 I’m liking what I’m reading…
Sue, that’s an excellent point about the older neighborhoods. The smaller lots really don’t fit in with today’s lifestyles. Most families have more than one car. I also agree that bigger yards and more space decreases neighborhood problems.
I don’t have any scientific proof, but I’ve always thought that part of the reason the inner city is less desirable is because of its’ topography. It’s flat and blah. Maybe we should go into these areas and do an extreme makeover – Decatur edition. Demo the worst neighborhoods, leave the nicer trees, dig out some ponds, push around the dirt to make some hills, make some bike trails, and then we’ll have an inner core where people will want to live. Yes I’m crazy, but I read in the plan that most of Decatur’s desirable areas are near the lake or in more hilly locations. It’s not that people hate the inner city, it’s just that Decatur’s topography is more attractive towards the lake, the Sangamon River, our creeks and so forth. If given the choice, I’d rather live near a wooded ravine or a lake, than in some bland neighborhood with zero curb appeal.
I’ll have to go take a look and see what’s on page 58….
I like page 58 too! It’s not as dramatic as my proposed inner city mountains and lakes but… Seriously, there’s some good common sense suggestions in there but it does concern me to see neighborhoods where the lots are all different sizes. It doesn’t look right but it sure beats living next to a rat infested burnt out shell of a house.
That is true that the flat is blah – but check out Champaigns innercity – it is flat too but looks great – Same with Bloomington from downtown outward. In my very biased opinion both those cities seem to do better then we do in maintaining a beautiful tree canopy along their streets also they did NOT opt to widen many of the main streets like we did both destroying our tree canopy and speeding traffic through our neighborhoods. This hurt too. Long ago and can’t be changed now but again, maybe narrow Monroe and allow parking along it. Maybe that would help. The mini park idea is used both in Champaign and Bloomington. I saw that mentioned in the plan.
I am old enough to remember when many of these neighborhoods really looked great. You’d be surprised what trees and well kept homes do to improve the looks of an area. No one replaces the trees they lose now. Wonder how Champaign does it? Urbana is amazing with the tree lined streets – absolutely no area is treeless along Green St from Campus town to downtown Urbana. It almost has to be forced by law because most of this is apartments and such.
Also, both Champaign and Bloomington boast a large golf course right along a inner-city main streets. In Champaign along Prospect and in Bloomington along Towanda – right off of Washington very close in.
You are right on how beautiful physically much of Decatur is. Also I’d love to hillier areas when I get walking it sure helps when you are trying to burn calories!!
I still remember the brick apartment building a couple old lady friends of my family lived in south of Grace Methodist Church – on Church street south of King and we walked there to visit them every Sunday. This was a pretty nice area in the late 60′s and even the early 70′s. I walked for downtown (SDHS) to 2085 N. Union my grandmas house real often. It was not even scary. I also walked from downtown to Fairview for a job I had regularly.
Oh, here is my new idea – narrow Monroe to 2 lanes change 1 right lane to a BIKE PATH and the other to parking!!!
Yeah, I agree that trees can make all the difference in any neighborhood- so can wide sidewalks, new curbing, bike paths, and attractive light poles, street signs, etc,. Burying phone and power lines helps improve the look of an area too – and also reduces power outages in storms.
Monroe is a narrow 4-lane road. I use it all the time to turn onto Garfield and the turn lane really isn’t wide enough for my liking. I like your idea for the road. It would make it feel like more of a neighborhood, instead of a dragstrip.
Wow I agree totally on burying the power lines!!! There is a push right now to come up with projects due to the fact that the Obama team plans to use infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy. We have not only this but the fact that Ray Lahood is on his team and Dick Durbin is from downstate IL too. We need to be planning some projects.
I think that Obama does have broadband and high-speed Internet projects in mind for his stimulus package. There’s still parts of Decatur that are without DSL. My area is one of them. These are the types of infrastructure projects we need to move Decatur forward. The city was even talking about free wireless Internet, at least in the downtown area at one time. That would be a big plus.
It sure would be nice not to have to worry so much about ice storms knocking out electricity if more of our lines were underground. I don’t know if it has anything to do with climate change but it sure seems like we get hit with more ice storms lately in Central Illinois than we used to. They used to be a once a decade event and now every winter we’re threatened with more than one ice storm. Maybe it’s a fluke; I don’t know but it would be wise to get more of our lines underground.
One of the goals of beautifying Eldorado is burying many of the unsightly lines that crisscross it. North Water by St. Terasa High School and East Pershing are two other areas that would really benefit from such projects. All the lines and poles are unattractive and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to plant trees in the area.
I agree with you on all counts. My parent area did not have DSL available either. We just tried Xanadoo and so far it seems like a big improvement to the slow dial up they had out there.
I too support the Eldo project and we do need something similar on Pershing.