With highway diverted around town, Cornwall reimagines Main Street

With a bypass under construction to move the Trans-Canada Highway west of Charlottetown around the town of Cornwall, the local council is looking ahead at how that could change the community.

"It's going to be a different, new way of looking at the main street of the town," said Coun. Peter Meggs, chair of the planning board.

"We have all sorts of opportunities now to get ideas on how the main part of Cornwall should look in the future."

The town has hired the Halifax-based consulting company Ekistics Plan + Design to come up with new ideas for the main street. It has already conducted online surveys and workshops and is incorporating those ideas into a draft plan that will be presented at an open house Oct. 15.

'Reasons for people to stop'

Meggs has some thoughts about what he would like to see in the plan.

"From my point of view it would be nice if bicycle transportation was part of the design, if it was more pedestrian friendly. It doesn't have to be a high-speed corridor anymore. It can be designed so that there's more retail along there, [so] there's a lot of reasons for people to stop," he said.

"What used to be, really, a corridor that divided the town into north and south is going to be more of a, hopefully, gathering place for people."

The Cornwall bypass is scheduled to open in October 2019.

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With files from Angela Walker