A Safer and More Attractive North Water Street is Coming

North Water Street is home to a couple coffee shops and vacant buildings in downtown Kent, but this street won’t be recognizable in just months.

The city of Kent is moving into the final stages of reconstructing part of the downtown area. North Water Street is the next phase.

“What we would love to see,” Kent Economic Development Director Tom Wilke said, “is have North Water Street be just as vibrant as South Water Street. If you’re in downtown on a Friday or Saturday night and walk down South Water Street, where Water Street Tavern, Panini’s, and places like that are, it’s very, very busy.”

This construction project occupying North Water Street is known as the Pedestrian Safety Project. Wilke and other city engineers are implementing this plan for diagonal parking, colorful cross-walks and curve extensions, narrow lanes, and more street-lighting to take over the road.

This vison was re-created in a two-day community event last September, known as Better Block. Each and Every, a business located on North Water Street, designed most of the layout and artwork displayed during the event. Some of Each and Every’s designs at Better Block might be used for the Pedestrian Safety project.

“North Water Street is more quirky, so we wanted to communicated that through some of the design materials that we created for the event,” Each and Every designer Grace Berger said.

Berger said Each and Every used Better Block to generate a pedestrian-friendly, quirky, and welcoming atmosphere on the street, making it more suitable for the downtown area.

Even before Better Block, Each and Every conducted a neighborhood business survey to understand how people view the street before the North Water Street renovations come in. It recorded many of the responses from local business owners and residents.

Berger said a lot of the responses agreed: “We love the history and character of this street. We also want to see all the empty buildings that are here revitalized. We feel like it has a lot of potential, but we don’t want it to lose its character.”

One of the vacant buildings the community is referencing is 257 North Water Street, a two-story building near the Scribbles coffee shop.

Private Investor Patrick Madonio and seven others continue to renovate the building since they bought it over four years ago.

Madonio said, “(We) tore the back-half down just because it was structurally unsound. We’re going to replace it with the same side that was there. So, it will be a two-story cinderblock construction. It’ll be all brand-new utilities, pluming, electric, heating. We’ll replace the roof, all the windows, and the exterior will be all retuck-pointed, and the decorated work will be replaced.”

Madonio said they still don’t know what the building with turn into when it’s finished with renovations.

“We’ve talked to some micro-breweries and some restaurants and talked to a lot of people, but haven’t signed a lease yet,” Madonio said.

The vacant building is costing Madonio and the other investors more than 700,000 dollars, whereas the Pedestrian Safety Project is costing the city 1.2 million dollars.

One of the goals in renovating both the road and the two-story building is to attract more business to this part of downtown Kent, according to Madonio and Wilke. Wilke also said reconstructing North Water Street will address a safety concern.

“One of the reasons why we were able to get that funding from the state is that there were relatively high number of accidents on North Water Street,” Wilke said. “Whenever a road is narrower, people tend to drive slower. And then we’ll also put in a couple of bump outs to make the intersection that much shorter.”

Once construction to North Water Street begins in 2020, Wilke said he hopes the number of crashes decreases and more people will explore this part of the downtown area in the coming years.