The Rhinelander Chamber of Commerce is hosting a session open to the public next month to gather ideas to help downtown businesses affected by this summer's 'Streetscape' project.
The city of Rhinelander will begin a nearly $10 million dollar project to redo the underground services like water and sewer. They will begin in April, closing the Davenport Street bridge until nearly July 4. Nearly all of the downtown streets will be upgraded, but that has caused concern among the many downtown businesses. The city has carefully planned the process to reduce the impact to downtown businesses, but it will mean several of the main streets will be under construction through the summer trade season.
The Rhinelander Chamber of Commerce is hosting a brainstorming meeting to generate ideas for promoting downtown business during the Streetscape project.
Chamber Director Bill Clow says he's heard many ideas from many people to help the businesses, so they've scheduled a brainstorming meeting to see if some of those ideas could become reality...
"....we're going to host a brainstorming session to collect a lot of those ideas, maybe talk through some of them, and help us start to coalesce and some ideas we want to act on...."
Clow says they want to discover ways to help the public continue to go to downtown businesses...
"....but access to them will be different. They won't be able to drive down some of the streets for parts of the summer. There will be pedestrian access to the downtown buildings, stores and restaurants. We want to come up with ideas for promoting the downtown...."
Clow says they will pull those ideas together and then decide which ones to act on. The meeting is March 9 at 7:30 a.m. at the Hext Theater on Brown Street. Representatives from city hall and Downtown Rhinelander, Incorporated will be on hand.
