Moscow residents who feel the city’s entryways are due for improvement need not worry. The Moscow City Council has identified goals with the Entryway Beautification Project to determine how to improve the entryways and make them both characteristically and visually pleasing.
Andrew Deskins | Argonaut
An abandoned EXXON station is one of the first things someone sees as they enter Moscow along U.S. Route 95 coming from Lewiston. The City of Moscow is currently in the planning stages of an entryway beautification project.
The goal was first identified in the spring of 2012 and has since reached the planning stage, which will conclude next spring. According to officials involved in the current planning stage, it is highly possible improvements could begin by the summer of 2014.
However, the project will encompass more than the improvement of the entryway signs. Community Development Director Bill Belknap said his department suggested the council look at the project as an opportunity for improving the appearance of the whole community.
“We talked with the council about looking at their goal from the perspective of roadway corridors, not necessarily just a ‘Welcome to Moscow,’ make a sign pretty, and then if it is not very attractive beyond that point, that’s maybe not the best effort,” Belknap said. “Maybe we’re looking at more of the overall impression of visitors coming to our community, about the appearance of the community as a whole. And so we suggested to the council that maybe the scope of the project should incorporate our four major entries to town, so we have (Highway) 95 that comes into town, north-south from Coeur d’Alene to Lewiston, and then we have Highway 8 east and west from Pullman and Troy, and areas to the east.”
Belknap said a committee has been established to provide proper representation for the public project.
“We kind of laid out a proposed approach where we’d have a steering committee, nine member steering committee that has representatives from the city’s planning commission, our arts commission, City Council representation, as well as representations from businesses along those corridors, the Idaho Transportation Department, the University of Idaho,” Belknap said. “Because these are all state highways, we wanted to make sure we had that representation as well.”
In addition, the department attained public input on the proposed project through an open house held last week. Belknap said the public was invited to see what the project is about and what they believe should be the project’s highest priorities.
“So we went through an exercise, we had maps of each of the quadrants and gave people dots to put on the map to identify areas of improvement and the highest priority locations,” Belknap said. “We’ll come back, report to the council on what we heard as far as locations and types of improvements, what people would like to see, and then the council participating will authorize us to kind of move forward into that concept design phase.”
Among the locations, the north and south corridors were among those considered high priority. Belknap said another open house meeting is anticipated in November.
Walter Steed, City Council president, said while a plan is in the works, nothing is happening at this point.
“It’s just started. We don’t even have a laundry list of recommendations,” Steed said.
Steed said the list of recommendations needs to be established before costs can be considered. However, he said the project would benefit Moscow greatly.
“I think it will help enrollment at U of I,” Steed said. “It will make a better impression on people that are literally travelling through on Moscow’s one north-south highway — possibly give them reason to stop and find a cup of coffee somewhere, or something. Or, as opposed to ‘I can’t wait to get out here.'”
Steed emphasized the importance of Moscow’s appearance to visitors.
“If this place looks like nobody cares, why should they?” Steed said.
For more information on the project visit
www.ci.moscow.id.us/planning/Pages/Entryway-Beautification.aspx
Andrew Jenson can be reached at [email protected]