[05/03/02]Designers at the city’s ongoing six-day planning session have drawn a plan for a dressed-up Clay Street entrance into historic downtown.

The planning session, called a “charrette,” began Monday and will last until Saturday with presentations and a public comment period each night. Meetings are at the Vicksburg Convention Center and are open to the public.

Ann Daigle, the city’s community planner, said Wednesday engineers, designers, architects and planners have used public input to sketch out an entrance into downtown at Clay and First North streets featuring a landscaped median and zoning codes to encourage development in the area.

“All it (Clay Street) looks like is this big ribbon of asphalt that goes on and on,” Daigle said.

That intersection was selected because it is the highest point along Clay Street. A rendering of the intersection that will be presented at the final public presentation tonight shows a monument in the center of a landscaped median with sidewalks.

The idea is to create an image of the historic parts of Vicksburg along one of the main roads used by tourists coming into the city. This first phase of the charrette is focused on Clay and Washington streets and Mission 66.

A second phase, in about six months, will focus on residential areas and the rest of the city.

At the end of each session, designers will create a set of new zoning codes called a SmartCode for the city. The new set of regulatory codes will emphasize public places, landscaping and pedestrians instead of suburban neighborhoods and automobile traffic.

“The most important thing that came out in the first days (of the charrette) was the truck traffic,” Daigle said.

Residents and business owners have complained for years about the 18-wheeler traffic that rumbles through the historic parts of downtown Washington Street and along Clay Street. Daigle said the group has looked at a couple of options to direct the traffic outside the municipal limits, including banning through traffic or extending Levee Street south along Washington for trucks.

A state project to build a port-connector road from U.S. 61 North to Haining Road has been delayed for years by the Mississippi Department of Transportation because of financial concerns.

Another area the group has looked at is rezoning the area around the convention center towards retail or residential development. The area is currently industrial, but is between the city’s garden district and historic district.

“It might be another 10 or 15 years or later, but when those buildings leave, it will revert to a different use,” Daigle said.

The SmartCode will be the first major revision to the city’s current zoning laws written in 1971. Some adjustments were made in 1996 to accommodate the areas annexed into the city in 1990 and a draft proposal of a new zoning ordinance was put together by a citizen committee three years ago, but has never been implemented.

While the planning session will produce a new set of codes, Daigle said the new SmartCode will incorporate some aspects of the proposed zoning ordinance.

“We have all of those studies and we’re looking at them,” she said.

The new code will be brought back to the city board in about 90 days for approval, but planners are seeking public input on the design. The SmartCode will have to be adopted by the city board and are not expected to affect any current businesses.

The new codes would primarily affect new businesses or major renovations. Some things the SmartCode will stipulate in some areas will include building height, set- back distance from the road and total size of the building.

During the meetings, experts are presenting ideas using renderings and drawings of how Vicksburg could look based on a SmartCode.

The entire program is being videotaped and aired on the city’s cable Channel 23. The cost of Phases I and II of the charrette is about $250,000.