Designers Call on Residents’ Big Ideas for Clark Street Makeover

Lake View organizers have all eyes on the Clark Street business corridor, and now they’re calling on residents to share their likes, dislikes and big ideas for the struggling shopping district.

The Lakeview East Chamber of Commerce has joined forces with design experts The Lakota Group to create a plan to turn Clark Street around. And although officials with the organizations held an open house meeting on May 1, they’re seeking more feedback and big ideas.

At that meeting, The Lakota Group’s vice president—appropriately named Kevin Clark—presented elements that make other business corridors successful, ranging anywhere between streetcar-only roads to sidewalk bump-outs.  

Now he says anyone who couldn’t attend the open house and give their two cents from home.

“We’re basically in the first part of this process. This is a 3-phase process,” Clark said at a recent South East Lake View Neighbors meeting. “Our first part is outreach and analysis. … On our project website, we basically have a virtual open house. It’s really just a way to engage people and get them thinking about some issues in the corridor.”

The online survey asks residents look at a multitude of photos of elements like huge murals and arches over the roadway, and then rank them based on how much they liked or disliked the idea.

Using the mass of data, The Lakota Group will come back for another open house meeting to present a more unified plan. From there, the process will be repeated, narrowed down again, and then implemented.

“We're going to come back for the next open house in the third week in June, I believe,” Clark said. “We're going to come back with a whole lot of ideas. And those are just ideas with a range of options.

“From there we'll narrow it in,” he continued. “And a big part of this is trying to get some implementation strategies for how to get this stuff done. We can draw a lot of pretty pictures, but really at the end of the day we want to implement this plan.”

Want to sound off on the Clark Street corridor or share any big ideas? Take the survey online.