An alleyway system is in the plans to expand North Augusta's Greeneway.
Alta Planning and Design, working with North Augusta 2000, gave a public presentation in the Palmetto Terrace of the Municipal Center to share ideas that were given to them throughout the week. The design firm, which works nationally on trails, showed the vision of what the Greeneway can become as a revitalization tool in North Augusta's downtown.
"We were asking you to not think about timing or budget constraints; to dream with us how this alley system can work as a downtown connection," said Blake Sanders, Senior Landscape Architect at Alta Planning and Design. "The first thing we have to do is understand the character. Before we jump into the design process, we had to find out 'What is North Augusta?' We put some pieces together and found that North Augusta is the front door to South Carolina's river. We stuck that in our minds and in our back pockets and everything we do kind of related back to that."
Sanders and his design team worked to come up with visuals for the public, showing how the current drab alleyways can become restaurants, shops or parks for users of the Greeneway. Alta Planning and Design also didn't want to change the look of North Augusta, a city they said was "first class."
"The design process is very, very simple — we want to blend everything together," Sanders said. "We don't want to come in with preconceived ideas and push those down your throat. A good design and great solutions, which we seek, are the ones that the public came out and gave to us. All the ideas that were pitched to us, we looked to see that they met the vision, the character and that it was able to be implemented."
Mary Anne Bigger, Director of North Augusta 2000, said the plans to expand the Greeneway came from looking at how other cities utilized their trails.
"We went around and visited some other cities, got some ideas and started to figure out what we could do here in North Augusta," she said. "With that, we realized we had such a great asset in our Greeneway, wouldn't it be great if we could pull our Greeneway into our downtown area. After a lot of research and looking at other cities, we realized this is something we could possible do with the help of Alta Planning and Design. We entered into a partnership with them to come up with a plan to bring our Greeneway into our downtown, bring people into our downtown area and hopefully have a revitalization."
While the plans to expand the Greeneway are in the works, there is much work to be done. The next step for the project is for Alta Planning and Design to bring true cost estimates for Phase I, which includes forming the alleyway system for the Greeneway. That will then be presented to the City for approval.
T.J. Lundeen is a reporter for The North Augusta Star. Follow him on Twitter @lundeentj for more updates.