Marion corridor plan upsets business owners

Posted on Jul 29, 2009 by Adam Belz.

The question before Marion is whether a radical re-envisioning of the city’s central corridor will do enough long-term good to justify the pain it will cause businesses along Seventh Avenue.

The city of Marion and architects held often contentious public input sessions Tuesday and Wednesday as they work on concept drawings of the several blocks east of downtown. People across the city seem pleased with the idea of pedestrian-friendly shopping, trails and green space on what is now a stretch of strip malls, fast food restaurants and industrial sites, but the roughly 50 business owners already there say such a project would ruin them.

“We have to look at it from the perspective of all 33,000 residents,” said Nick Bowden, a community planner for Olsson Associates, the Omaha firm that drew up the controversial plan.

Seventh Avenue traffic drives business to the several used car dealerships, convenience stores and businesses like Dairy Queen, Burger King, KFC, Subway and Denny’s Muffler. The drawings call for a new Sixth Avenue that at best would draw traffic away, and at worst would eliminate portions of Seventh Avenue as a thoroughfare.

Snooks Bouska, who owns the land on which Dairy Queen sits and sold the restaurant to his daughter a year ago, said he and other business owners will organize against the proposal, and may eventually take legal action.

“Any reduction will have a significant impact on us,” Bouska said. “Keep Seventh Avenue open.”

The city owns the railroad right of way where Sixth Avenue would be and for years has dreamed of redeveloping the industrial land along it. Seven variations of the plan will be available to the City Council, which likely won’t see a formal proposal for another 12 to 18 months.

The least radical option would extend Sixth Avenue eastward and install trails along it. The most radical option would install a roundabout on the east edge of downtown, add a column of green space farther east and route most eastbound traffic onto Sixth Avenue instead of Seventh Avenue, opening up development opportunities along the new thoroughfare but effectively cutting off Seventh Avenue businesses from the traffic they say they need to survive.

Deana Benson, who lives in east Marion and attended a meeting Wednesday, said she would love to see trails downtown, and likes the drawings she saw.

“It’s good for us, but it is going to hurt a lot of people,” she said. “There are a lot of unhappy businesspeople, and they’re going to have to pacify them somehow.”