West Avenue Streetscape Concepts Presented to Council > City of Kannapolis | City of Kannapolis

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A major component of the Kannapolis Downtown Revitalization Plan is the infrastructure and streetscape improvements planned for West Avenue and the surrounding streets.

Over the past year staff has been working with DFI and Land Design to examine options for the best design for a streetscape that is unique, has green space, outdoor dining and social hubs, maintains traffic flow and parking options, encourages pedestrian activity, provides interaction between businesses downtown and preserves the historic core of the City. 

“The streetscape is critical to creating an experience for the people who will live, visit and play in our City. While it is an outdoor space it is our living room and we want everyone to feel welcome and to spend time and ultimately money here,” commented Kannapolis City Manager Mike Legg. “We have one shot at this. We have to look at this as a long-term asset. What will it look like once it is completely built out? This is what we have to realize as we make the decision of how we want the downtown to look. We are envisioning how the City will be built out years from now.”

City Council was presented with three streetscape concepts for West Avenue to accommodate these goals. 

The concepts included:
• Linear - a street with parking on both sides of the street with green space and outdoor dining and event areas concentrated on one side;
• Serpentine - a street design that curves through downtown with parking, green space and outdoor dining and event areas on both sides
• Signature - a design which combines both the serpentine and linear features with two traffic circles, green space and outdoor dining and event spaces.

Staff prefers the Signature streetscape concept as it combines the best elements of linear and serpentine options, maintains the majority of the Willow Oaks on West Avenue and allows for the safe coexistence of vehicle and pedestrians in the downtown core. 

 
City Council is expected to make a decision on the preferred streetscape concept at its November 28 meeting.

The infrastructure project will include replacing and upsizing aging and undersized underground utilities such as water, sewer and storm water, install new technologies, resolve tunnel and routing of utility issues.
Work on the infrastructure and streetscape is projected to begin summer of 2017.

Draft Signature Streetscape Concept for West Avenue