Downtown Implementation Plan, 1999

The Florence Downtown is an important part of the community historically, culturally and economically. Historically, it is the site of the earliest settlement in the Florence area. Oriented to the river, the Old Town area was a thriving community related to the logging and fishing industries.  Many of the original buildings are still in use.  Their design sets a character within which newer buildings have been placed generally in a compatible manner.  Culturally, the Florence Downtown is still the center of the community.  Besides the attractions of Old Town, the Downtown area contains a major grocery store, the Events Center, the post office, financial institutions, the Chamber of Commerce, a mix of commercial uses and City Hall.  Economically, it is still an important area of commerce, and the Downtown Plan seeks to strengthen this commercial core by creating a pedestrian friendly character to the area and by providing safer pedestrian connections across Highway 101.

The long term goal is to create a “Mainstreet” character for the area, with streets designed to encourage pedestrian use by:  widening sidewalks and providing safer pedestrian crossings, providing for on-street parking, locating building fronts at the back of the sidewalk, providing for parking in the interior of blocks, encouraging mutitple story buildings, encouraging mixed use development with residential units on the upper stories, retaining key public uses in the downtown, providing design guidelines to assist property owners in designing new or redeveloped structures in the historic character of the community, and developing a Downtown Green and other landscaping appropriate to a Mainstreet character.

The Florence Downtown is described as the area bounded by Highway 126/9th Street on the north, Kingwood on the west, and the Siuslaw River on the south and east.  On the north boundary, the area loops north to include the Quince Street area north of Highway 126 including its intersection with Highway 101.

In 1998, after working with Downtown merchants on a parking study, and on other concerns, the City realized that an overall plan for the future of the area was necessary in order that incremental improvements would fit into an overall master plan.  The City obtained a Transportation and Growth Management (TGM) grant to hire consultants to work with the community to prepare an areawide plan for the Downtown. Lennertz, Coyle, and Associates were chosen, and a Downtown Committee was formed.  The consultants worked closely with the community through a series of workshops and charrettes to develop a draft Downtown Plan which was presented to the City Council in final draft form on June 30, 1999.  The Council and the Downtown Committee worked on condensing the Plan into a Downtown Implementation Plan (DIP), which was then adopted by the Council on September 20, 1999.

The goal of the Downtown Implementation Plan is “to revitalize the downtown area as the primary cultural, tourist, commercial and community core to serve all of Florence’s citizens and visitors.”