Hamlet’s new city manager sworn in, streetscape plan unveiled

HAMLET— John Terziu was sworn in as Hamlet’s new city manager during the council meeting.

Terziu took the oath of office, pledging to uphold the constitutions of both the United States and North Carolina. In addition to the city manager’s swearing-in, Assistant City Manager McKenzie Webb addressed the council regarding planning board vacancies.

“We had one of our planning board members, Valerie Davis, she resigned and then David Quick rotated off, so we’ve currently got three vacancies and the applications are in front of you. We’ve got two open city seats. One is an alternate, and then we have one ETJ alternate open as well,” Webb said.

Mayor Pro-Tem Abbie Covington motioned to Mayor Amy Guinn about the application process and the need for a public call for new submissions, asking to extend the submission period.

Covington, along with council members Tony Clewis and Eddie Martin, voted in favor of the motion to extend the application period. However, Oscar Sellers voted against it, preferring that the board handle the process immediately.

The meeting also included a presentation by Jon Blasco, a landscape architect and senior project manager with WithersRavenel, who discussed the proposed streetscape plan for downtown Hamlet. Blasco shared that a site analysis, which included walking through the corridors and meeting with stakeholders, highlighted several challenges, including parking issues and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accessibility.

“As you well know, we’ve got a lot of situations where the storefronts aren’t ADA accessible, you’ve got to go up a set of stairs,” said Blasco. “This probably being the worst-case scenario, but as we go up, we’ve got steps, it may be a couple of inches, it may be a matter of a couple of steps.”

Blasco also pointed out that improperly parked cars along Main Street create the problems in the area.

“We’ve got cars parking out into the street,” he said. “So what can we do to improve the streetscape? Make it more pedestrian-friendly, make it safer, and make it more viable for the businesses that are there.”

Feedback gathered from the community over the summer influenced the final designs presented. Blasco explained, “We presented several ideas, several options to the community. We got a lot of feedback over the summer. We took that feedback and started to dive into what our final concepts were.”

Some of the proposed options include streetscapes with parallel parking on one side and angle parking on the other, or parallel parking on both sides of the street. A key focus for Blasco’s team is improving the railroad crossing to make it more pedestrian-friendly.

“Looking at different opportunities here for what can we do in those areas where we’ve got a lot of great change between the front door of the business and the sidewalks, looking through a lot of different ideas,” he said.

Blasco also emphasized the importance of community engagement in the planning process.

“We really believe that community engagement is important to our process. We really value that. It’s not just checking a box for us. So we take that information really seriously. We take that, incorporate it into our work throughout the process,” he said.

According to Blasco, the primary concern voiced by residents was dissatisfaction with parallel parking on Main Street. “What we heard a lot of is people didn’t like parallel parking, they wanted angled parking, which we totally understand, you know. It’s easier to pull into, parallel parking is a pain. No one likes to do it. You open your car door into the street. Angled parking gives you a lot better safety in terms of exiting and entering a car. It does create some safety challenges backing out.”

Blasco also addressed the ADA issues, which the streetscape plan aims to resolve by adding more sidewalk space on Main Street. “In order to fix the ADA challenges, we need a lot more sidewalk. What we’re proposing is along the frontage of the building, ramping that sidewalk up to match the storefronts, to match the doors. So that way as you’re walking up or down Main Street in a linear fashion, you’re basically at each door level so you don’t have to steps to go up anymore, solving a lot of the ADA problems.”

He further elaborated on the design, saying, “What we’re really doing up here is sloping up to meet the doors, and then for a section, be able to slope back down to the curves. Unfortunately, that doesn’t give us much for angled parking within the first block. But what that does do, aside from fixing the ADA issues, is it gives us a really nice streetscape. It gives us an opportunity to have a walking zone, it gives us an opportunity to have sort of a sitting zone. So, when you do pull into your parallel spot, you open your door, you’re not opening your door right into the travel way of the pedestrians.”

The plan includes angled parking near Town Hall, where the businesses aren’t as close to the street, easing the ADA issues. “We have a lot more opportunity where businesses aren’t right up against the street. We don’t have the ADA issues that we have in that first block of the more historic section of downtown,” Blasco explained. He also highlighted that the design will create safer intersections and more pedestrian-friendly areas by narrowing the road, slowing down traffic, and improving accessibility.

Blasco noted that most businesses already have driveway cuts and that his team is working to preserve access while reducing the size of the driveways to create more parking space.

Mayor Guinn raised concerns about the reduction in parking spaces due to the shift to parallel parking. Blasco acknowledged the challenge, calling the situation a “trade-off.”

Blasco concluded his presentation by providing a cost estimate for the streetscape project, which is expected to be approximately $4,572,284.