Thanks to a combined effort among the city of Detroit Lakes, Roers Construction and Development, DLM Downtown Properties and RDG consulting plan, a site plan for Downtown Crossing has been developed and now approved.
The Detroit Lakes Development Authority approved the site plan and façade design of the Downtown Crossing development, which will be along the Veterans Park and behind the Ace Hardware area.
"We're pretty excited about this," Jim Buus of DLM said. "We've been pre-marketing this."
The plan includes two buildings for a total of 24,000 square feet that are connected at the top but have open paths to get from one side of the building to the other on sidewalk.
"We've had to design around a lot of quirks" of the area, he said.
ADVERTISEMENT
The buildings will have a multi-height look to fit into the Washington Avenue buildings and be a gateway to them from the east.
The development authority talked about rear entrances to the buildings, parking along Veterans Memorial Parkway and the lot behind that is city-owned, and whether angled parking or 90-degree spots were more feasible and user friendly.
A public meeting is being held Monday at 5 p.m. in City Hall especially for downtown business owners and parking assessments, and DLDA member Mary Beth Gilsdorf asked that the different design options be mentioned at that meeting to let the public and business owners know that other options have been considered. She said it would put some minds to rest that it wasn't from the standpoint that it's a design the developers like and everyone else is just stuck with it.
"It's all going to tie in together nice," Buus said of the entire project. "I'm really excited about it."
