Introducing The New Eighth Street

Traverse City residents and commissioners will “experience a walk down Eighth Street in the future” tonight (Monday) at a public open house, where a new master plan for the corridor will be unveiled.

National consulting firm Farr Associates will host the event from 5-7pm at the Governmental Center. The firm will also meet with city and planning commissioners during a joint 7pm study session to discuss the new plan, which was created based on community input from an intensive week-long charrette process this May.

The open house event will display a large floor map allowing residents to “walk the Eighth Street you envisioned” and view renderings of new streetscape and redevelopment concepts for the corridor. The firm’s recommendations cover both traffic configurations and an overhauled zoning code for Eighth Street.

On the streetscape side, plans call for three traffic lanes, pedestrian sidewalks and mid-block crossings, green landscaping throughout the corridor, and two protected cycle tracks, or dedicated off-street bike lanes going in either direction next to the sidewalks. “The road’s been narrowed about nine feet (in the plan), the bike lanes have been taken off the street, and there are five-foot sidewalks and five-foot cycle tracks,” explains City Planning Director Russ Soyring.

Two more significant traffic recommendations including installing signals at the intersections of Wellington and Franklin streets, and reconstructing the intersection of Woodmere Avenue and Eighth Street to align with Railroad Avenue. “It’s pretty progressive, the idea of taking an intersection we have today and moving it over,” acknowledges Soyring. But realigning the intersection would solve traffic conflicts created by Railroad Avenue’s proximity to the existing intersection, such as cars trying to dart across lanes of traffic to access Eighth or Woodmere or vehicles turning left from Woodmere onto Eighth and making abrupt “hard right turns” onto Railroad, according to Soyring.

As for installing two new signals at Wellington and Franklin, Soyring says he questioned Farr Associates about traffic flow and “was assured modern signals allow for great (vehicle movement) that fits the traffic patterns.” Lights could be coordinated to facilitate continuous traffic flow down Eighth Street, and also programmed to more heavily favor eastbound or westbound traffic at different times of day, depending on commuter patterns.

“The biggest concern raised before we even restriped Eighth Street is that it’s extremely difficult to cross as a pedestrian to get to the trail or lake,” says Soyring. New neighborhood signals and crosswalks – along with pedestrian islands along the corridor – will “help people in the neighborhood get safely to Boardman Lake,” says Soyring.

The Eighth Street master plan also calls for introducing a brand new zoning code for the corridor – one that would be the first of its kind in Traverse City. While traditional zoning codes focus on land use and which types of businesses and residences are allowed where, the “form-based code” recommended for Eighth Street focuses instead on how developments look and are laid out. The type of usage in each building is less important than the aesthetic of the corridor.

“Perhaps the biggest benefit of a form-based code is the predictability of what will develop along Eighth Street over the years,” says Grand Traverse County Deputy Director of Planning and Development Jean Derenzy. “You will know the types of buildings that will be allowed, how big they can be and where the parking on the lot will be located. The uses allowed inside the building would depend on the building type that is picked for development. In general, residential, office and retail would be allowed in most building types.”

The master plan outlines two new mixed-use development zones along Eighth Street, allowing for buildings between two and five stories tall. “Gateway” zones near the intersections of Boardman and Woodmere avenues could allow buildings up to seven stories tall, so long as they include “community amenities such as workforce housing.” Buildings as tall as 10 stories were initially offered as an option during the charrette process, but Soying says the final recommendation of a seven-story maximum was more “reflective of the (feedback)” from the public.

“The most controversial item was the building heights, and we had an additional workshop in June that solidified that people were most comfortable in that (seven-story) limit range,” he says.

Based on feedback from residents and commissioners tonight, Farr Associates will make any necessary final tweaks to the master plan and then submit the document for official adoption by the city. Adopting the form-based zoning code for Eighth Street – which would override the city’s existing zoning rules for the corridor – would require a lengthy public review process through the planning and city commissions, Soyring says.

Traffic and streetscape recommendations could be built into the city’s capital improvement plan (CIP) “in phases” for upcoming years – particularly during Eighth Street’s planned reconstruction in 2018. Extending Station Street, or the alley south of Eighth Street, could be one of the first projects, according to Soyring, providing an alternate route through the corridor and access to businesses during the reconstruction project. The Railroad/Eighth/Woodmere realignment would be an “expensive component” of the redesign that might be addressed at a later date.

“We’re going to be talking about phasing…and seeing when it makes sense for (improvements) to take place,” Soyring says.