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Downtown Bozeman Partnership plans priorities for city’s future

Posted at 2:21 PM, Jan 13, 2019
and last updated 2019-01-13 16:21:44-05

There’s no question Bozeman has changed a lot in ten years. About every decade, the Downtown Bozeman Partnership pursues a study to highlight priorities for the future.

Chris Naumann, executive director of the Downtown Bozeman Partnership, said the biggest surprise for him after this latest study was how different downtown Bozeman is now compared to what it was when the last plan was adopted in 2009.

“The complexity of the issues is really profoundly different than it was a decade ago. I think the plan does an excellent job of addressing those complexities with a solid series of recommendations that will serve us well going into the future,” he said.

One of the major recommendations in the study looks at converting Main Street into a three-lane road.

“With a center turn lane and diagonal parking on each side,” Naumann said. “The intent would be to provide better traffic flow with turning maneuvers, but also provide more parking right in the heart of Main Street where most of our retail businesses are located.”

Naumann says another thing this study found was downtown Bozeman needs to interact with other developments around the city.

“We really need to form a synergistic relationship with other districts, like midtown 7th and the Cannery, and create connectivity between those districts and, really, all ships will rise with the rising tide,” he said.

Another suggestion is to make better use of alley spaces.

“You look at something like the courtyard in the back of Plonk and there’s the opportunity to do more things like that and really bring some vitality and almost a pedestrian scale to the alleys, almost like they are secondary streets,” said Naumann.

Naumann says the plan will be tweaked a bit, and then he’ll present it to the city for adoption in mid-April—and then the real work will begin in Bozeman.