New Brighton architect wins prize for Stillwater plan

The future of downtown Stillwater? Five architects and a designer have been meeting in a spartan room next to the Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce for the past few months to sketch it out.

Words scribbled on long sheets of vellum paper -- taped to the walls with blue painter's masking tape -- show what they've been concentrating on: Main Street. Chestnut Street Mall. Storefronts. Biking. Parking. Traffic circulation. Dozens of computer-generated sketches fill the conference room table.

The sketches and ideas will soon be compiled in book form and presented to the chamber's Downtown Revitalization Committee and the Stillwater City Council.

Todd Streeter, the chamber's executive director, enlisted the six men to help the chamber generate images and blueprints showing what downtown could look like after the new St. Croix River bridge opens in 2016 and the Stillwater Lift Bridge closes to vehicle traffic.

As part of the bridge construction, a bike-pedestrian loop trail will be created, circling the new bridge and the old. In addition, the Brown's Creek State Trail is being built on the former Minnesota Zephyr dinner train route, which runs north and west out of downtown Stillwater. With its connection to the Gateway Trail and St. Paul, it's expected to bring in thousands of bicyclists.

"We're trying to be proactive and get ahead of the curve," architect Brian Larson said. "Because what's going to happen is that it's going to be pretty abrupt -- all of a sudden the bridge will shut down and these bike trails will show up."

Architect Tim Old, of SALA Architects in Stillwater, added: "It seemed like there have been a number of times in the past 40 years that all of this stuff has been visited and revisited, but we're faced with some new opportunities because of the bike trail and bridge."

The most eye-popping proposal: turning the two blocks of Chestnut Street that run from Main Street to the lift bridge into a pedestrian plaza.

"When you think of Stillwater, you think of the lift bridge," Larson said. "It's like a magnet, and the plaza would be sitting right in front of it. You hope that you take a bold move, and do what you can with it. To have an open (city) block like that, it just doesn't come along very often.

"Some people have talked about running (the plaza) all the way up to Third Street -- to the (Chestnut Street) stairs," he said. "Wouldn't that be something?"

Read more from the original source:
New Brighton architect wins prize for Stillwater plan