Don't repeat past mistakes, Marion council told

Former Marion City Council member Frank Reynolds remembers the last time the city made major changes in the downtown area.

“Somebody from out of town came in with this grandiose plan,” he told the current City Council at its regular meeting Thursday night. “I should remind you that we lost every single council member except the mayor over that.”

He was talking about the late 1970s when, in an effort to revitalize the near-dead downtown, a system of one-way streets with reduced parking was put into place. The plan was scrapped a few years later.

“We almost lost Marion 30 years ago,” Reynolds said after the meeting. “I don't want it to happen again.”

He and the handful of others who voiced objections to a proposed realignment of Seventh Avenue traffic through town were assured by council members and city staff that no decisions have been made, and none will be made for several months until much more public input is gathered.

“I hope we'll have something by the end of the year,” said planning and development Director Tom Treharne. “But even then, it will only be a concept that will evolve over time. We don't have that right now.”

A corridor development proposal unveiled last month called for rerouting Seventh Avenue traffic on the east end of the downtown onto an extension of Sixth Avenue along what is now abandoned city-owned railroad right of way.

That design alarmed a number of business owners who feared losing drive-by customers.

Gary Bolden, owner of the half-century-old Marion Brush Manufacturing Co. at 1685 Seventh Ave., told the council that closing Seventh Avenue to through traffic would bankrupt businesses and destroy the city's tax base.

Now that he and fellow Seventh Avenue property owner Snooks Bouska have been added to the corridor steering committee, however, Bolden said he feels less fearful.

“We're not against progress. We just don't want to kill the backbone of Marion,” he said.