by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
With the new Main Library in its final phase of construction, the City is expecting a steady stream of customers will be headed to Hemming Plaza. To accommodate that traffic, plans to convert one block of Laura Street in front the building into a two-way road are in the works.
Marcy Cook, a spokesperson for the City’s Public Works Department, said that before the end of June, new signals and signage denoting the change will be installed near the library.
The building itself won’t open until later in the summer.
“We recognize that with the library and JMoMA (The Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art,) both being in Hemming Plaza, customers are going to be attracted to the area,” Cook said. “Hopefully, by converting Laura Street in this manner, we can get them in and out of both facilities quickly and efficiently.”
But opening up the rest of downtown’s streets in the same way may be on a more delayed track, despite a recent allocation of more than $6 million. That money was made available through a recently passed City bond that was designed to pay for “downtown traffic improvements” but only near the much-delayed courthouse project.
Cook said talk of converting one-way streets downtown including Adams, Julia and Pearl streets remains on the back burner for now, but not completely off the stove. Consulting firm King + Robinson made that recommendation to the City’s Planing Department years ago but the weighty cost of doing so continues to plague any efforts to get started.
“Converting that stretch of Laura Street is completely separate from the rest of what might happen downtown because of the funding issue,” Cook said. “It wouldn’t be cheap.”
But City Council member Suzanne Jenkins, whose district contains a large chunk of downtown, said it would be worth it.
“I say the sooner the better,” she said. “We have more people coming downtown everyday. If we’re ever going to make the roads down here two-way streets, we should do it now so people won’t have to relearn anything. It would be the norm.”