Tomorrow Old Town Clovis hosts their first ever parklet festival. When posting that reminder, I realized I never upload photos of the new Centennial Plaza and streetscape development. I talked about it back in July of 2015, and I visited the area a few months ago, but never actually posted them!
If you visit the parklet exhibitions, you will surely see the new plaza. The city planners will also be using the festival as an opportunity to celebrate the groundbreaking of two new buildings what will ride on vacant lots on either side of the plaza.
So let’s take a quick look. As you can clearly see, these photos were taken in January, but aside from more greenery and less holiday decorations, the area looks the same today.
The plaza is located at Bullard and Pollasky. The project area included the intersection, the plaza, the surface parking lot (existing, it was re-organized), and the mini-section of Bullard west of Clovis Avenue. You can clearly see the two empty lots set for development.
Looking at the plaza from the street parking on Bullard.
The new lights have outlets, probably to accommodate the numerous events held in Old Town.
Looking at the new streetscape improvements. Extended sidewalks for pedestrians, textured crosswalks, and low curbs. Lots of new lights as well.
The tree has leaves now. I am not sure if the bollards can be or should be removed when the street is closed to cars for special events. Note the lights have two heads – critical redundancy for crosswalks.
Plenty of new signs.
Good ADA compliance.
One of the new buildings will go here.
And the other will go here.
Seen from one side…
And seen from the other side.
Center tree in the new plaza.
Some seating, but could use more shade.
More seating. We’re looking from Pollasky over to Clovis Avenue.
The parking lot in the center of the block was redone to create a better walkway, and add new lighting. Once the new buildings go up, it will be hidden.
The parking lot is accessed from Clovis. This used to be a random and ugly dead-end street. It has since been formalized as a more attractive entrance to the surface lot.
This is Clovis Avenue. A new pedestrian walkway leads here. Clovis Avenue needs work.
Too many lanes on Clovis Avenue
While the streetscape improvements did involve new curb cuts on Clovis, they didn’t impact safety on Clovis proper. Still lots of work to do.
This section of Clovis was done on a different project.
And that’s it!