Posted 11:29 pm Monday, March 08, 2010
Kilgore's New Downtown Shows Off Distinct Styling
By BETTY WATERS
Staff Writer
KILGORE -- While many cities have decorative street light poles, new light poles in the "heart" of downtown Kilgore are distinctive and striking.
Staff Writer
KILGORE -- While many cities have decorative street light poles, new light poles in the "heart" of downtown Kilgore are distinctive and striking.
"Ours just stand out," said Fallon Burns, Kilgore's Main Street manager. "They are so tall. That's one thing why they are so impressive, and they are just big. They are beautiful."
Kilgore's downtown light poles have a big base and stand 22 feet tall. There's an electrical plug at the top, where lighted garlands were plugged in during Christmas, and another at the bottom, where vendors can plug in for festivals and other events.
The modern light poles are tall in order for colored Christmas lights to be attached to the poles and strung across the street, pole to pole, to recreate the appearance of Kilgore during the Christmas season in the 1930s. It's the return of a historical Yuletide look that local residents desired.
The poles also are tall to insure the strands of Christmas lights meet an 18-foot Texas Department of Transportation restriction for anything over a roadway and to allow trucks to pass underneath.
Design of the light poles, Ms. Burns said, was a key factor in a streetscape project aimed at beautification of downtown, as well as improving storm water drainage.
The streetscape project began with only two blocks -- the 100 block of North Kilgore Street and the 200 block of East Main Street. Yet it brought about a major change in the appearance of the central part of downtown Kilgore.
Phase 1, which cost approximately $2 million, installed street light poles, built new sidewalks and provided benches, trash receptacles, shrubs and other plantings in mid-block and neck-down plantings at intersections, plus improved drainage.
After a lengthy planning stage and meetings to get input from the public before engineers began design work, Phase 1 took a year to complete and was financed with a municipal bond issue approved by voters in 2008.
The streetscape project is part of an overall effort to revitalize downtown Kilgore.
More importantly, Ms. Burns said, a fa?ade improvement program, also sponsored by the Main Street program, has led to a facelift for many downtown buildings. More stores are opening downtown and an increasing number of community events are being conducted downtown.
The advances on various fronts helping make downtown the "hub" of Kilgore, some observers say.
As planning for Phase 1 of the streetscape project progressed, Ms. Burns said, it became clear having strings of Christmas lights go across the street was very important to the community.
"The Christmas lights had to go across the street. They
had
to. The project wasn't going to get off the ground if the lights weren't going to go across the street," she said.
to. The project wasn't going to get off the ground if the lights weren't going to go across the street," she said.
Ms. Burns got the message about what downtown merchants wanted when she began talking to them after becoming Main Street manager about three years ago. It came across overwhelmingly also in public forums.
"Everyone wanted new sidewalks and decorative lighting and they wanted the Christmas lights to go across the street like they did in the '30s," Ms. Burns recalled. "Don't ask me how in the world they did it back in the '30s. I don't even know what they attached to."
Figuring out how to do it was not an easy task even for today's structural engineers as they designed the light poles, she said.
Before the streetscape project started, white lights mounted on buildings beamed during the Christmas season, but no strands of colored Christmas lights stretched across the streets.
In the first step toward reinaugurating the tradition of Christmas lights hung across downtown streets, the Main Street program and the city draped strings of historic big, colored Christmas bulbs just in intersections. They were attached to flashing traffic lights.
"That made a tremendous difference," Ms. Burns said, and as consideration of the whole streetscape project progressed, there was no getting around that it would have to include stringing Christmas lights across the streets -- all up and down the streets as well as in the intersections.
Accordingly, 39 street-light poles were installed in an "L" shaped, two-block stretch along the 100 block of Kilgore Street and the 200 block of Main Street -- an area considered the "heart," or central part, of downtown Kilgore.
"Because they look so good, we are ready to expand it. That's why we are talking about Phase 2 of the streetscape project," Ms. Burns said. Officials of the city and the Main Street program are planning the next phase.
The streetscape Phase 1 finished a month ahead of schedule, with the work substantially complete by late November last year, beating the goal of having it finished by last Christmas to facilitate Christmas shopping.
It went "pretty flawlessly," Ms. Burns said in an interview. "I had no idea it would look as good as it does."
But there were surprises and inconveniences.
Construction workers found at least 20 underground gasoline storage tanks and other things underneath the sidewalks put there many years ago that officials today did not know existed and that had to be removed.
Construction workers found at least 20 underground gasoline storage tanks and other things underneath the sidewalks put there many years ago that officials today did not know existed and that had to be removed.
"It rained and rained and rained last October," Ms. Burns recalled, causing a virtual river in front of some stores. Shoppers had to cross muddy construction sites to reach stores dependent upon walk-in traffic, often balancing on planks that temporarily replaced torn-up old sidewalks.
"Between the monsoon of October and the gas tanks, I can't believe it went as well as it did," Ms. Burns said.
Before new sidewalks could be installed, the infrastructure had to be updated. Original, ancient water lines and mains dated back to the 1930s.
Underground storm water drainage pipes were too small and had to be upsized. There was no storm water drain on Kilgore Street. In the past, rain often flooded merchants and turned some downtown areas into lakes until a city manager took steps to relieve the problem in the 1980s.
As part of the streetscape program, a drainage pipe with a 42-inch diameter was put in. "It hasn't solved the (flooding) problem, but we've definitely taken another huge step in alleviating that problem," Ms. Burns said.
"A lot of the work that we've done was underground. That's how most of the money was spent," Ms. Burns said.
Mike Burns, vice president of KSA Engineers Inc., a Longview firm retained by the city of Kilgore, told a gathering at a recent public meeting that after a lengthy planning stage and after seeking public input, "What we did with Phase 1 was upsize everything underground (in the two-block stretch) to accommodate larger storm flows."
Yet he added, "We still have a problem with getting water out of downtown until we do a larger, more comprehensive storm water improvement project for the downtown area."
Draining water out of downtown is one aspect that will have to be addressed in the future, the engineer advised, noting there are drainage pipes too small to handle discharges, causing an overflow.
As city officials and residents move toward Phase 2 of the streetscape project, Burns advised them to keep the storm water issues in mind while striving to have nicer sidewalks and to install more street lights.
Two main systems drain all of the downtown area to get storm water through outfalls to the old city park and quite a bit of storm sewer pipe will have to be upsized, Burns said.
With Phase 1 finished, the mayor and several council members approached the Main Street director early this year saying they are committed to the entire downtown area and suggested efforts start toward formulation of Phase 2 of the streetscape program.
One of the first steps was a public forum giving residents the opportunity to vote on areas that Phase 2 might include.
Of five options, most who participated in the forum favored the 300 block of East Main Street to address needed drainage in the vicinity of Citizens Bank. "After that, people wanted to send the streetscape where it would affect the most businesses," the Main Street director said.
Other areas under consideration are the 200 block of North Kilgore Street, 100 block of South Kilgore Street, 100 block of Main and East North Street beside the World's Richest Acre Park.
The city council has received estimates of design costs totaling approximately $500,000 for the various options and decided to study them more and consider funding methods.
Extending the streetscape another two blocks could cost "$2 million or less" and the earliest it could start is 2011, Fallon Burns said. One option for funding the second phase would be another municipal bond issue, she added.
"I think we could continue with this project for several blocks. It all depends on the political environment and how the money is," she added.
"City council is very supportive of downtown. We've had a great three years that the Main Street program has been up and running. The program has really taken off. Everyone has worked together," the Main Street director said.
