Brian Kent has done work in Gardiner, Belgrade and Richmond throughout his career as an urban planner and designer. Kent hopes his experience will help residents in Hallowell as they prepare for the city’s upcoming road reconstruction project.
Kent will present his ideas about Hallowell’s Water Street project during a talk at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Hubbard Free Library.
He has thoughts on how to make the plans more bike and pedestrian friendly, how to honor the city’s historic heritage and how to feature landscaped parks and open space.
In an email, Kent said he gets the sense that few residents can visualize what the Maine Department of Transportation’s plan will look like for the reconstruction of Water Street, currently scheduled for 2018.
“I hope to show how other Maine communities have made improvements to their downtowns and how some of those designs may apply to and look like in Hallowell,” Kent said. He was asked by a number of residents and friends to provide his input because of his background.
Kent said Hallowell has been dealing with many of the issues he will talk about for more than 40 years. He thinks the Water Street project provides the city a chance to aspire to a more pedestrian friendly urban environment.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something exceptional,” Kent said, “to integrate the city’s plans for parking, historic structures, parks and open spaces with those proposed by the Department of Transportation.”
He said the concepts associated with Context Sensitive Design, which is an approach to public works projects that meet the needs of users, have not been fully explored in Hallowell.
“Now is the time to do it,” Kent said.
The Department of Transportation will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. April 14 at Hall-Dale Elementary School in Hallowell to continue the discussion on the Water Street project.
Jason Pafundi — 621-5663
Twitter: @jasonpafundiKJ
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