The city of Belle Plaine is proposing a downtown project that would be slated to start in Spring 2022. Despite the city identifying the need for the downtown project about five years ago, no real public engagement has occurred to date.

The city held four informational meetings about the downtown infrastructure (two on Aug. 10th and two on Aug. 12th for business and property owners affected by the project. However, it was indicated at that meeting that no further public engagement would occur before the project is slated to go back to the city council in October for approval and construction would start in 2022. You can view the Belle Plaine Herald's article and view the plans here.

The project is being rushed through as an infrastructure project to correlate with upcoming county and state projects. However, the project includes bumpouts, reduced parking, outdoor seating, lighting, and other pedestrian improvements.

Regardless of whether or not you feel the downtown needs to be updated, the community deserves to provide input on what they'd like to see downtown. Other communities take years to do projects of this magnitude. We should do it right, so we don't have to do it again.