Downtown Facelift Begins Today

The Christmas shopping season may be months away, but workers from Fredericksburg's Public Works Department are busy preparing for the season with one of the largest recent efforts to rehabilitate parts of the historic downtown area. City Manager Bev Cameron hopes that the clean-up effort will have the downtown area looking much improved by the first weekend in November. 

"With budget cuts over the past years city services have been reduced, including investment in the downtown commercial district," said Karen Hedelt, director of Fredericksburg's Department of Economic Development and Tourism. "We consider our historic downtown one of our key assets since it is visited by so many people so it was very encouraging to have funds to improve our appearance."

Crews have already been hard at work cleaning and replacing the glass in the city street lights. Today, the work kicks into high gear as crews from the Public Works Department begin to attack weeds, dust, dirt, trash, cobwebs, streets and gutters. Eventually, portions of the downtown brick sidewalks will be repaired where needed. As part of the effort, the public works department will be acquiring a new street vacuum to use in the effort by mid-August. 

Public Works staff will also be developing a plan to paint the street light poles, install tree-gates in tree wells, install new trashcans and refurbish media boxes. Officials from Cox Communications have also been asked to refurbish their junction boxes. 

Rehabilitating the downtown Fredericksburg area has been a hot topic lately. has been touted as a way to improve the facades of downtown businesses. Officials in the Economic Development and Tourism Department also recently unveiled the framework for