Committee recommends keeping Main Street one way

Main Street would stay a one-way, southbound street in downtown Cape Girardeau if a city planning committee gets its way.

The committee also recommended Wednesday night that Water Street be turned into a one-way southbound road, meaning that there will be two parallel southbound, downtown streets within a block of each other.

Committee members had studied making Main Street two ways but dropped the idea because of opposition from downtown merchants.

The committee will make its recommendation to the planning and zoning commission next Wednesday. Three members of the commission served on the six-member special committee, including commission chairman Skip Smallwood. The other three members were downtown civic leaders.

The final decision rests with the city council.

The idea of changing Main Street back to a two-way street has sparked debate among downtown merchants in recent months.

Even the planning group had trouble deciding what to recommend. One member of the group, downtown jeweler Kent Zickfield, said allowing two-way traffic on Main Street from Broadway to William Street still makes the most sense.

Main Street, the city's first shopping area, handled two-way traffic for 150 years before being turned into a one-way southbound street in 1956.

Zickfield predicted that shoppers and downtown visitors will demand it revert to two-way traffic when they get frustrated by having to go as far west as Spanish Street to find a northbound route to replace Water Street.

Water Street currently is two ways. But street renovations will turn it into a one-way southbound street by this summer with a decorative sidewalk and reading rail alongside the floodwall mural.

Committee and planning and zoning commission member Scott McClanahan said restoring two-way traffic to Main Street is an issue that may have to be revisited at a later date.

But for now he and other planning members said they prefer to leave Main Street alone.

Committee members said motorists on William Street can turn north on Spanish Street or travel east past Main Street and turn north on the pavement that runs in front of the Red House and empties into a downtown parking lot.

From the parking lot, visitors could reach Independence Street where they could proceed west to Spanish Street and then back north to Broadway, committee members said.

Under this plan, Broadway would remain a major entrance to the downtown and provide a direct route to the riverfront. "Broadway is the doorway to the downtown," Zickfield said.

At Wednesday's meeting at city hall, Smallwood suggested making Main Street two ways from William Street to Independence Street while keeping Main one way southbound from Broadway to Independence.

But some committee members objected to the idea.

Zickfield said it would create traffic chaos to have two-way traffic facing one-way traffic at the Independence Street intersection.

"You're going to get somebody killed," he said.

In the end, the committee decided to leave Main Street alone.

Said Zickfield, "There is nothing we can do that is perfect."

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123