Downtown sidewalks will stay the same width in Nampa

Nampa decided to stick with its existing 11-foot-wide sidewalks in its historic downtown district after weighing public input in November about installing 21-foot sidewalks and parallel parking.

Business owners and other downtown stakeholders at a Nov. 12 open house resoundingly rejected suggestions that sidewalks should be widened to 21 feet to conform to Nampa’s 2009 Downtown Streetscape Standards. The open house and subsequent block meetings were part of the effort to revise the 2009 standards, Nampa long-range planner Karla Nelson said.

The City Council did authorize Nelson to plan for a wider sidewalk on 13^th Avenue South between 1^st and 2^nd streets South because businesses there indicated an interest in sidewalk dining, Nelson said.

Elsewhere on segments of First, Second and Third streets and 12th, 13th and 14th avenues, the revised streetscape standards call for 5 feet of brick sidewalk from the curb and 5 feet of concrete to the buildings.

The first order of business will be for city-funded sidewalk improvements where trees have damaged the sidewalks. The city has budgeted $167,000 in Community Development Block Grant funding to remove trees and build new sidewalks on one side of the street on one block of a tree-damaged sidewalk yet to be determined, Nelson said.

Beyond that, it has not been determined when any other sidewalk work will be done or whether the city or property owners will pay for them, Nelson said.