Mark Bennett: Studying a makeover of Wabash Avenue through downtown

Mar. 10—Wabash Avenue serves as the aorta of downtown Terre Haute. It's upheld that duty for a century and a half.

Maybe old Wabash could look more appealing, entertain more special events, and be kinder to the river that shares its name in years to come.

Such possibilities will be studied this year. Destination streets in other Hoosier cities feature pedestrian-friendly and green-infrastructure elements.

Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett believes some of those innovations could enhance the portion of Wabash Avenue extending from Fourth to Ninth streets downtown.

"I've seen it work in so many other places," Bennett said Wednesday morning. He cited elements of Main Street in Evansville and Georgia Street in Indianapolis as examples.

Also, the green-infrastructure elements on Wabash Avenue could mirror those implemented in the makeover of the parking lots at the Vigo County Courthouse and Terre Haute City Hall government campus. Underground vaults and aboveground devices along Wabash could capture surface and storm water and filter it into sandy soil on the spot, Bennett said.

The city wastewater treatment facilities' workload, and the Wabash River itself, would benefit.

The downtown is one of the city's biggest contributors to surface water overflow, the mayor said.

Other changes could involve pedestrian-oriented elements. That could include raising the street surface to sidewalk level (a building-to-building flat-street concept), while incorporating "traffic calming" aspects like bollards (posts made of strong materials), walkway materials other than concrete or pavement, added sitting areas, landscaping and lighting, Bennett said. Old railroad tracks under Wabash would also be removed.

Parking, traffic flow and space for deliveries would continue, he added.

"It would accommodate all of that. None of that would change. It would just look different," Bennett said.

"That will make it much more inviting to be downtown," he said.

The changes would add more flexibility for special activities. "I think it would allow more events to happen downtown, because you're creating a space to encourage that," Bennett said.

The study of whether such changes will work on Wabash Avenue took an initial step this week. In its Tuesday meeting, the Terre Haute Board of Sanitary Commissioners approved VS Engineering of Indianapolis as a consultant for the "Wabash Avenue Green Infrastructure Planning and Design (Flat Street)" study. The study's cost is "not to exceed $264,000. That includes all initial preliminary design, the formal design process with drawings and public-bid documents," Bennett said.

The study will include meetings with all of the business owners along that sector of Wabash, as well as public-input forums, Bennett said.

"I'd love to have a preliminary design by the end of the year," the mayor said.

Many Hauteans, no doubt, have walked along Georgia Street in downtown Indianapolis. That roadway got a full makeover as the city prepared to host Super Bowl XLVI in 2012, as an urban walkway lined with restaurants, historical points of interest and venues such as Circle Center Mall, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Lucas Oil Stadium, Gainbridge Fieldhouse and the Indianapolis Convention Center.

Of course, Indianapolis (with 882,039 residents) vastly outsizes Terre Haute (population 58,525), so replicating Georgia Street isn't practical here. Some of the Georgia Street features are "a little bit of overkill," Bennett said. Yet some of its elements, such as pedestrian areas and its curb-less design could work on Wabash.

Likewise, the sector of Main Street in Evansville through its downtown and near Ford Center, which opened in 2011, has elements that Bennett believes could be adapted on Wabash Avenue in Terre Haute.

"It's just like what we would be doing," Bennett said. "It looks good. It's inviting. And the whole thing is traffic-calming."

The original walkway along Main Street in Evansville was built in 1971, and then was torn out and replaced with a brick transit mall in 1987, Kelley Coures, executive director of Evansville's Department of Metropolitan Development, said Thursday.

A separate project on a different one-mile stretch of North Main Street in Evansville, launched in 2016, included the installation of green infrastructure, with underground tanks (below parking spaces) to recapture storm water and release it into the earth, in addition to a six-block protected bicycle path, brick crosswalks, vintage street lighting, and lighted bollards along the cycling path.

"It's a very aesthetic look," Coures said.

Injecting various elements used on Evansville's Main Street and Indianapolis' Georgia Street, on a smaller Terre Haute scale, would bolster the possibilities for the new Terre Haute Convention Center, Bennett said.

He cited the upcoming convention of the Professional Firefighters Union of Indiana, scheduled for May 24-26 at the convention center. That gathering will include special events on Seventh Street and Ninth Street, including a musical performance, with temporary closings approved for both roadways, Bennett said. Enhancements on Wabash would create space to more easily accommodate those twists, he thinks.

"We expect more of that in the future," he said. "You take the convention out into the streets, so to speak."

Terre Haute City Council member Martha Crossen, whose district includes a portion of downtown, hadn't heard about the Wabash Avenue green infrastructure study approved Tuesday by the sanitary board. She wants to learn more about the funding sources, if such a project was to be undertaken, especially amid other planned projects.

"I'm not against it by any means," Crossen said Friday, "but I would like to have more information on how it fits into the grand scheme of things."

To get funding for green infrastructure and pedestrian-friendly changes to Wabash Avenue, "we'll probably use a variety of sources," Bennett said. Those include funds through the city sanitary district, the economic development income tax fund, tax revenue from the under-construction Terre Haute Casino Resort and the state's Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI grants), he said. Such a project would likely be done in phases, he added.

If so, cruising the 'Bash — albeit more slowly, and maybe even on foot — might become a thing again.

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.