Cape business, city leaders map out improvements

It could be the ultimate downtown cleanup -- a plan to turn a rugged ravine of scraggly trees, underbrush and algae-covered water that once served as a Cape Girardeau city dump into a landscaped municipal park.

The proposal is part of a 3-year-old downtown improvement plan drawn up in 2001 by Minneapolis landscape architect Michael Schroeder. Among other things, the plan envisioned construction of Fountain Street as a decorative brick-styled boulevard with roundabouts. The city has been following Schroeder's lead in planning the extension of Fountain Street north from Highway 74 to William Street.

Right now, city planner Kent Bratton is more concerned with pavement than with transforming the Happy Hollow area into a park. Bratton is looking at the possibility of constructing a new street that would run from the proposed Fountain Street roundabout at William Street north to connect to Independence Street at its intersection with Middle Street.

The proposed street would wind behind city hall and come out at Independence Street just east of the new federal courthouse now under construction.

Bratton said it makes sense to look at the possibility of building the street now because the main entrance to the courthouse currently is planned to connect with Independence Street at the Middle Street intersection.

If the city wants a street to extend south from Independence Street rather than just a circular driveway for the courthouse and city hall, it needs to push ahead with the planning work, Bratton said.

The City Council could ask Smith & Co., a Poplar Bluff, Mo., engineering firm, to do the planning work, Bratton said. The company already is developing plans for extending Fountain Street northward from Morgan Oak Street to William Street.

"We need to move fairly quickly on that," he said, adding that he hopes preliminary street plans can be developed within the next 60 to 90 days.

The proposed connector street would end on the north side of the proposed William Street roundabout just west of Indian Park. The Fountain Street extension would join the roundabout on the south side.

But while Fountain Street is proposed to be built of brick pavers and have a landscaped median, Bratton said the connector street -- which would skirt the Happy Hollow area -- would be a regular concrete street.

Schroeder's plan, the blueprint for Cape Girardeau's downtown redevelopment efforts, envisions expanding Indian Park into the Happy Hollow area. But it doesn't envision the connector street.

Old Town Cape, a not-for-profit group formed in 1999 to promote redevelopment in the city's 130-block historic commercial and residential areas, commissioned the plan.

Downtown businessman John Wyman said the area would benefit from converting Happy Hollow into "green space" that would essentially expand Indian Park.

Downtown jeweler Chuck McGinty said the city could benefit from both a connector street and the re-landscaping of Happy Hollow.

McGinty said adding the connector street could make it easier for Southeast Missouri State University students to travel between the main campus and the school's soon-to-be-built River Campus on Morgan Oak.

"I think that would be a shortcut," he said.

The new $49.3 million, brick federal courthouse now under construction will also dress up the area, McGinty said. "The magnificence of the new federal building once it is completed would far overshadow the problem of looking at a concrete drive," he said.

Bratton said the added street could improve access to City Hall. He is not aware of any federal opposition to building the street.

Downtown civic leaders view the new courthouse as an aesthetic landmark that would be complemented by a park-like setting. Bratton has a different opinion.

The new courthouse won't be a destination for the average visitor, he suggested at a recent meeting with downtown merchants.

"It's hard to convince people that the courthouse is not a tourist attraction," he said.

As Bratton sees it, the new courthouse will be a destination only for prosecutors, public defenders, federal judges and those charged with crimes.

Building the connector street would not preclude the city from turning Happy Hollow into a park. But cleaning up Happy Hollow -- once home to rats and vagrants -- would be harder than building the street.

That's because the wooded ravine currently helps drain the surrounding area, Bratton said. An old brick tunnel that starts in that area still drains storm water into the Mississippi River a few blocks to the east.

Any effort to rework the landscape would have to include drainage improvements, Bratton said.

But downtown civic leaders said the Happy Hollow area and neighboring private property that is home to junked taxicabs and other vehicles needs to be cleaned up. "We're going to have to do something," said downtown resident and former city councilman Tom Neumeyer.

Neumeyer said a downtown neighborhood group unsuccessfully proposed a dozen years ago making Happy Hollow a green space.

"To my mind, it would be the perfect place to recreate wetlands," he said, pointing out that there is an old spring on the site. Schroeder's plan envisioned a pond-like area in Happy Hollow.

Catherine Dunlap, who directs Old Town Cape, said downtown improvements so far have largely followed the Schroeder plan. "At least everybody is singing out of the same songbook," she said.

"We have always had Michael Schroeder's plan as the benchmark. It's kind of our Bible," said Dunlap who was hired to direct downtown renovation efforts in November 2000.

Old Town Cape wants to improve traffic flow in the downtown and dress up the landscape. It also wants to make it convenient for bicyclists and pedestrians to get around, Dunlap said.

"It takes planning. It takes vision," she said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123