More coming for center st. project? (Scranton, Washington: apartments, loft, stores)

[scrantonluna]

I have to say, the work on center st. downtown is very impressive, but is anything else planned? They have created a VERY nice area there, but there is an extreme lack of store frontage. Are they planning on cutting store fronts into the backs and sides of the buildings? It would certainly be worth it. These are exactly the type of projects the city needs to take on, I just wish this one had a little more in the way of commercial opportunity.

[cjseliga]

I think all that's left is to put some decorative lights up at the end near the bank, if they haven't already and maybe add a sign or two. They're not cutting into any buildings, it's just a $600,000 alleyway (walkway) with faux cobberstone and brick, made from concrete. Amazingly that project was announced back in 2003, and was supposed to done by the end of 2004.

I guess all the people staying at the Hilton will have a pretty and expensive walkway they can use to connect to Washington Ave. You have the old Casey Laundry building with their Loft apartments and some stores there, but that's all that can basically be done with that area. The huge building along the Adams Ave side is the Verizon building, which is definitely not going to be made into new stores.

[scrantonluna]

Oh well, I still think it's a nice addition, and I hope they repeat it in other areas of the downtown. Maybe they'll expand on the center st. part at some point in the future.

[cjseliga]

While I think it looks nice, it would have been more practical and cheaper to just pave the street with asphalt. Just wait until there's a water main break, gas leak, or Verizon needs to access their fiber optic lines under the street, and they jack hammer the heck out of the concrete. I guess they'll have to restore it to the way it looks now. I don't know it people remember when they had entire blocks of downtown Scranton paved with "Z" bricks, and these were actual bricks, no faux there, while it looked different and nice, it was totally impractical, when they had to access the utilites under the road.

I think the last block to have this brick roadway was on Wyoming Ave., between Spruce and Lackawanna, then they put in new sidewalks, curbs, bus pullouts and finally paved it with asphalt. I think faux or real cobblestone and "Z" brick is nice for pedestrian walkways or roadways that don't have any utilites under them, because restoring them is expensive and not too easy to make it look like the original.