Lodi City Council weighs in on priority projects
Improved sidewalks, city-wide broadband and improving parts of downtown are the projects Lodi City Council would like to see completed very soon.
Each councilman presented their list of priority projects during Tuesday morning’s shirtsleeve session, and all had one common bond — to improve tourism and economic development in the city.
Councilman Doug Kuehne said the two go hand in hand and are primary to enhancing the city.
His top priorities were to look at improving the Main Street corridor on the east side of downtown between Elm and Walnut streets, as well as revisit the idea of possibly building a boutique hotel next to The Merlot on Elm Street.
“There’s been plans in the works to do more downtown, and I don’t want it to get lost because we haven’t looked at it (in a while),” Kuehne said. “There are dollars out there that could fund some of these things. We know there’s conversation about moving the post office, which should be done because they’re cramped for space with parking, and turning that into a plaza or hotel or maybe renovating it. There’s ton of economic opportunities in the downtown corridor.”
Kuehne also wanted the city to look at some sort of pathway project, either a “Rail to Trail” or a bicycle and pedestrian path that could possibly connect World of Wonders Science Museum visitors to Lodi Lake and vice versa.
He said it was also important to begin the process of removing many of the buildings along the western side of Sacramento Street so the WOW museum can
begin its long-awaited expansion project.
City Manager Steve Schwabauer said a contractor was on Sacramento Street recently, assessing how to proceed with the removal process.
Once removed on the 100 block of Sacramento Street, the building will be replaced by the WOW Plaza, which will involve closing the road to traffic, converting to a pedestrian thoroughfare with a fullservice dining facility and museum store.
Four classrooms and four laboratories will also be constructed, along with a carousel.
Vice Mayor Mark Chandler agreed with Kuehne that tourism and economic development will be key to the city’s future success. With that in mind, he said, a priority should be providing free broadband Internet to all residents and visitors to Lodi.
He also wanted the city to move forward on placing a grape monument at the Turner Road and Interstate 5 intersection.
“We have a window that is going to be open for brief time, it’s going to be important to execute,” he said. “(The monument) will have huge impact, because 120,000 people drive by that intersection every day and they’ll see this 35-foot high bunch of grapes, and they’ll wonder what’s going on in that community and they’ll want pull over and see what’s going on.”
Chandler also supported the proposal to convert the downtown post office into a hotel, as well as creating an access center somewhere in the city, although he didn’t think the three locations currently being considered were the right sites.
Last November, the council authorized Schwabauer to draft a letter to the U.S. Postal Service expressing intent to develop the School Street branch into a hotel. The post office would be relocated to another part of town.
Councilman Shak Khan at recent meetings has tried to convince staff to consider lighting for cricket pitches and bringing a mobile library to the city’s Heritage District.
While he acknowledged he most likely wasn’t going to be able to secure funding for those two priorities, he said the city should look into improving sidewalks or building some where they do not exist.
“If we couldn’t get those over the last 100 years, and we can’t in these next four years, we’re never going to get them done,” he said. “We live in the 21st century, and we want to make sure ... I talk to the citizens and I know how they feel with no sidewalks in front of their houses. They’ve got a 70 year old lady with a cane leaving her house to get to the car and go through all that.”
Khan also wanted to see alleyways cleaned up and improved, and making some of the city’s narrower streets converted into one-way traffic thoroughfares, as residents park on both sides of the street, making it difficult to accommodate traffic in both directions.
Councilman Mikey Hothi favored a repaving of the sidewalks along Lodi Lake, as well as allowing restaurants to continue providing outdoor dining.
He also wanted the city to look at modifying its commercial cannabis policy.
“Everybody knows its happening all around us,” he said. “We have delivery services that are allowed to deliver throughout the city, we’re just simply not collecting the sales tax revenue. So I think we need to revisit that policy.”
Mayor Alan Nakanishi also favored improving sidewalks and undertaking pavement projects, but said his focus was on improving public safety in his district.
“I’d like to have more police presence in the first district, and would like to look at speed and noise issues on Lower Sacramento Road, which has been a complaint from many people,” he said. “I think the city staff should look at what each of has said and see if you can implement any of this, make some choices.”
No action was taken during the shirtsleeve meeting, as staff will return with a priority checklist in the coming months for review and approval.
“My plan would be to go back and go through this presentation one more time, create a checklist and bring it back to you,” Schwabauer said. “If you guys want to make clear anything I misunderstood in terms of what your requests were, then you can vote on each one individually ... and go about placing them on our priority lists as we apply for grants or figure out which projects we’re going to work on bringing forward.”