By Adam Studzinski

NORMAL – The future of Uptown Normal is starting to take shape.

Farr Associates, which has been working with Normal on the project titled Uptown 2.0, presented its initial recommendations for the area to the public Monday night. Farr President Doug Farr said one recommendation is a pedestrian underpass for the railroad tracks.

“If you want to be a ped/bike community, that is to say people are on bikes and can get from one side of the tracks to the other, underpasses are a lot better than bridges,” said Farr. “Because you have to only go down about 12, 13, 14 feet as opposed to going up in the air 26 feet.”

Farr added they’re also proposing to make Mulberry Street and College Avenue two-way roads, rather than one-way.

“Uptown Normal is a walking place and the commerce, and the activity, and the demand for being there has to do with the fact that people are not driving around it, they’re walking around it,” said Farr. “When there’s a street like that that’s a really high speed street it limits the size of Uptown.”

Another recommendation is to move the library to a new building south of the railroad tracks.

“There’s a proposal for there to be a new street south of the tracks, kind of a diagonal, the front door of the library would basically be facing the tracks across a park,” Farr said.

Final recommendations for Uptown 2.0 will be made to the Town Council in August.

Adam Studzinski can be reached at [email protected].