SAND SPRINGS, Okla. — Work begins Monday on a long-awaited project to beautify a block of downtown Sand Springs. City leaders say the improvements are key to helping keep the downtown’s growing momentum alive.

“We know it’s something other cities are doing to try to not only support their existing businesses, but help attract new ones,” said Brad Bates, the neighborhood services director for the City of Sand Springs.

The plan involves ripping out old, cracked sidewalks and street pavement and starting from scratch in a part of downtown Sand Springs that city leaders say has been seeing some momentum lately.

“About five or six years ago we started to see a significant reinvestment in this block of downtown,” Bates said.

He says new businesses have been filling previously vacant buildings along Main Street between First and Second streets—and sprucing them up.

Sand Springs Downtown Streetscape project rendering

Sand Springs Downtown Streetscape project rendering

“We want to make the outside of their businesses as beautiful as the inside they’ve put their heart and soul into,” he said.

Thanks to bond money approved by voters—work will begin on phase one of that beatification Monday.

“You’re going to have brand new concrete the whole length of the block, you’re going to have brick paver edging that runs to the end,” Bates said. “You’re going to have new pedestrian lighting, new landscaping. You’re going to have plants and trees.”

It’ll all tie in to a similar project the Oklahoma Department of Transportation has already started along Second Street on the north end of the block.

More crosswalks and pedestrian signals are also included in the project. All of it is part of the city’s goal to make downtown more walkable and—in turn--more marketable to new businesses.

“It’s going to beautify, it’s going to make people want to come down and see it,” Bates said. “It’s going to accentuate the existing businesses we already have.”

Once phase one of the improvements between First and Second streets are complete, Bates says the plan is to have a phase two and three extending those improvements two blocks more to the north on Main Street to beautify the rest of downtown. He expects those phases to begin within the next one to two years.

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