Downtown Rhinelander, Incorporated hopes to get the Rhinelander city council to keep the Streetscape portion of a downtown upgrade in its plans.
The city is proposing to redo the old underground infrastructure around the downtown next year. Downtown Rhinelander, Incorporated helped put together a "Streetscape" plan to redo the above ground portions of downtown.
D.R.I. Board President Dan Kuzlik says with the loss of funding for joint efforts downtown, he says the group wanted to find out what the Downtown group should be doing. He says they found four goals, including public support to keep the Streetscape upgrade...
"....these things come about about every 60 or 70 years. We don't want them to tear up the streets all summer in 2016, and then when they pave them over again everything looks the same again, like in 1940...."
Kuzlik says they hope to get the city council to spend a bit more to complete the job...
"....we have to convince them because the BID went away, Downtown Rhinelander, Incorporated did not go away. We have current overlapping resources that without any other sustainability will allow us to exist for 12-18 months which will take us through the Streetscape period...."
He says the other points those attending the meeting felt D.R.I. should continue are economic viability, the image of downtown, and sustainability. About 25 attended the meeting.
