Meeting #11 - Downtown Dover Crosswalk Workshop

We discuss ways to help ensure success with our plan to improve crosswalks in downtown Dover

Welcome back to the Strong Towns Seacoast Newsletter and thank you for reading. We held our 11th meeting this past Saturday at the Dover Public Library to discuss some ways to improve our engagement with the city and community of Dover. In the last month, Dover’s Deputy City Manager, Chris Parker, arranged a meeting with myself and several city officials to help make progress on the plan that we proposed in April to improve two crosswalks in downtown Dover. We held a productive conversation and I realized that I needed to help further refine what we are asking for and what success would look like so that the city can move forward with confidence. So, that is what we talked about in our latest meeting.

New Monday Meetup

Before we discuss the details of our meeting, a while back I asked about other days that an in-person meeting would be a good option and the majority response was Monday. So, we are going to be starting a new, additional monthly meeting on Mondays at Juniper Kitchen on Third Street in Downtown Dover. For this first Monday meeting we are going to do a walking audit (sometimes called a Jane’s Walk) of Dover and will be walking from Juniper Kitchen to Henry Law Park and back all the while discussing areas where improvements could be made or where excellence is observed. Please join us for our first Monday meeting!

Juniper Kitchen
6 Third Street, Dover
July 22nd
6:30PM - 7:30PM

What Would Success Look Like?

I first want to say that it is the hope of our group that the changes to the two crosswalks will be a success for both the city and the community. It will be a success for the city if they are able to implement these changes in a cost effective way that increases safety in downtown and makes it more inviting for people to come. It will be a success for the community if they are proud of the changes and feel more comfortable and enjoy being in downtown more. If we only achieve one of those, then I think we will need to examine that feedback and make incremental changes until we get to that point. Strong Towns is all about taking small steps and then stopping to check for feedback and a real success will be a win-win for both the city and the community.

Workshop Topics

We covered 4 questions in our conversation and also established some action items at the end of our meeting.

Topic #1 Designing the Implementation

One of the things that I talked about with the city officials was what our group expects the final result to look like. What materials and how they are laid out was part of the conversation and John Storer, Dover’s Community Services Director, made it clear that whatever is used needs to create a safe place for people to wait to cross the street without blocking visibility or creating distractions for drivers. He recommended using Jersey barriers to create this because they will be capable of stopping a vehicle, but a person is still visible from behind one. This is a good suggestion and you can even see these in use near The Nook and Sonny’s Tavern in downtown Dover.

Topic # 2 An Opportunity for Art

Because Jersey barriers are blank canvases of concrete, it is an opportunity for us to add some passion and beauty to the installation with art. We can paint the sides of the Jersey barrier or even the section of crosswalk. We are creating a space for people and we can do better than dull, grey concrete and asphalt with white lines. It may even be possible to engage one of the schools in Dover and get some students involved with the display. Our ideal scenario is that we will be aided by Dover’s Arts Commission and I will be doing what I can to work with them on this.

Topic #3 Helping to Fund the Project

We wanted to explore ways that we can help the city fundraise for this project. While this section might be ambitious, if there is a way for us to help the city finance small projects like this we know that the city will appreciate it and it increases the chances of them working with us again. An idea that we had for this would be to host a design competition and members of the public can submit art design ideas and people can vote for their favorite ones by donating money to that specific design. All of the proceeds would go directly to the city for the project and the design that raises the most money would be the winner. Obviously there are challenges here with ensuring that the submitted designs are approved by the city and organizing the competition itself, but we think it is an idea worth exploring with the city to see if they are interested.

Topic #4 Engaging the Community

Finally we discussed how to take this idea to the community and engage them directly. One idea that I fully intend to organize is a day at Waldron’s Court, near the location of one of the crosswalks in our proposal, where we set up a table to discuss the proposal with people who are walking around downtown, perhaps even using the crosswalk itself, and ask for their input on it. This would be a great opportunity to meet more people in the community and share our ideas with them while also collecting their ideas as well. We will be putting effort into this soon, so stay tuned for more details!

Wrapping Up

We are very hopeful that we can make a positive change in Dover and are trying to explore ways of making that a success. Our primary obstacle at the moment is that we know that we have interest and buy-in for our ideas from the city, but we don’t quite have a timeline or the finished details of the plan. We are working on those and I will continue sharing updates with our readers as they develop. Thank you so much for checking out our newsletter and if you want to be a part of the conversation we would love to see you at a future meeting!