A rendering of what Eau Claire's riverwalk could look like.

The Eau Claire Downtown Riverfront District plan being discussed by city officials, Ayres Associates, and interested residents is starting to take shape. So if you haven’t made your own opinion heard, now’s as good a time as any. The last public involvement meeting (on Feb. 1 at RCU) asked people to focus on two items: whether Barstow should be one-way or two-way, and how you’d like the riverfront to take shape. Ken Voigt, a traffic analyst from Ayres, spoke to the first item after doing traffic counts and speculations for the future. The verdict: “Going from one-way to two-way won’t mean significant changes in any way,” Voigt said. Between the street’s efficiency, congestion, and volume, there’d be very little effect. Voigt went on to break down the pluses and minuses of each roadway, with two-way likely meaning less parking, tougher deliveries, slowed traffic, and more pedestrian conflicts. Disappointingly, none of the preliminary plans included bike lanes or the effect on amenities like bump-outs, plantings, wider sidewalks, kiosks, etc. (Read: More people need to make sure and tell them these things are important to them.) Garrett Perry, an architect from Design Studio ETC, presented three different options for how the riverfront could take shape (by no means the only options). Concerning the area directly across the Eau Claire River from Phoenix Park all the way down to the Lake Street bridge, the three renderings included riverwalks, private developments, parking, and a plaza. What sets them apart is how much space we allot for parking, private developments, and a pedestrian plaza. The most dramatic rendering includes a few private developments, almost no parking, and a pedestrian plaza area bigger than Phoenix Park. “These are lofty ideas, but we want to know how far you want to go,” Perry said. The next input meeting date has yet to be set. Review all the materials thus far, make your comments, and stay in tune with what’s happening through www.ayresassociates.com/ECDowntown/.