Last Updated: Saturday, February 9, 2008 7:21 PM CST
DRI gets positive report
Luke Laggis - City Editor
Downtown Rhinelander is well-anchored and poised to move forward. The sentiments were expressed when the resource team from the Wisconsin Main Street Program presented their overview of Downtown Rhinelander Incorporated's progress at a presentation Thursday night.
The resource team spent four days in town, reviewing the work DRI has done and speaking with city officials and community members to gauge thoughts and opinions on the downtown.
DRI Executive Director Sue Bessert said it was a productive week and she was encouraged by the volume of community involvement. She said over 90 people took part in focus group meetings with the resource team.
“It went very well,” she said. “We had a great turnout.”
DRI will be getting a complete written report on the team's visit in about four weeks. In the meantime, she said the group will begin to digest the suggestions and information the team provided.
“They gave us all sorts of cool ideas,” Bessert said.
Among the team's suggestions were improving internal communications between DRI's committees, creating a stronger work plan and calendar of events, taking greater advantage of design assistance provided through the Main Street program.
“We really need to work on our design guidelines,” Bessert said.
Stronger guidelines will help clarify the vision of downtown and facilitate improvements. DRI's current design guidelines are essentially a general set of national guidelines, that haven't been specifically tailored to the local architecture.
“We really need to adopt some guidelines that are good for Rhinelander,” Bessert said.
One of the things Bessert was pleased with was the team's recognition of the downtown's strengths. Bessert said she could see a lot of positive factors in the downtown's favor when she came to Rhinelander, and the resource team viewed things from a similar perspective. The group made note of the Rhinelander District Library, which serves 10,000 people per month, and the Oneida County Courthouse.
Bessert said DRI needs to have a strong understanding of the downtown's anchors in order to be able to build from them.
DRI will now begin evaluating the team's recommendations and breaking them down into committee-level work. The committees will look at the recommendations, determine how they apply to the specifics of DRI's work, and ultimately make their own recommendations on actions to the DRI board. From there, it's a matter of putting the plans into motion.
“They said plans are good, just put get it done,” Bessert said. “I would hope there might be some things that we can accomplish by the end of the fiscal year.”
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