See Before and After Pictures of the Evansville’s Main Street Walkway Following Reconstruction

The 300 block of the Main Street Walkway in downtown Evansville has reopened to vehicle traffic after crews spent the past month and a half replacing some of the original brick with concrete.

Downtown Evansville Announces Main Street Walkway Reconstruction Project

Earlier this summer, officials with the Downtown Evansville Economic Improvement District announced plans to reconstruct both the 200 block of the Walkway between 2nd and 3rd Streets along with the 300 block between 3rd and 4th Streets. For years, the street was open to pedestrian traffic (a.k.a. foot traffic) until the city decided to open it up to vehicular traffic in 2002. According to newly appointed Executive Director, Adam Trinkel, in the 20+ years since that decision was made, the amount of traffic and the weight of the vehicles took its toll on the brick-lined street to the point where bricks were cracking or missing altogether. The plan for those two blocks is to replace the brick in the driving lane of the one-way street with concrete that will be better equipped to handle the weight of the traffic.

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Work began on the 300 block in mid-August with an estimated completion date of October 13th. With the exception of a few rainy days here and there, the weather allowed crews to stick pretty close to that schedule with work on that phase of the project wrapping up the week of October 16th. Here's what it looked like before:

And here's what it looks like now with the bricks on the left side being replaced by concrete:

Finally, here's a side-by-side look at the difference:

The biggest thing that stood out to me when I walked down there to take a look earlier this week was how much brighter it seemed with the concrete compared to the brick. While I do think the brick added a certain charm to the street, I totally understand the need for the reconstruction and am glad to see they were able to keep the brick on the right-hand side for parking.

The newly poured driving lane also features a little "art," for lack of a better term, near the intersection with 4th Street where crews included a half-circle near a street lamp surrounded by a circle of bricks (at least I assume that's the purpose of the circle.

When I walked down there from our offices at the Fifth Third Bank Building on Wednesday afternoon, the block was still closed off to vehicle traffic. That changed on Thursday afternoon when Downtown Evansville announced on Facebook that cars were free to drive on it again.

Work on the 200 block is currently underway and is expected to be finished on or around November 17th, weather permitting. While the street is fenced off from vehicle traffic, just like when work was taking place on the 300 block, the sidewalks on either side are still open to foot traffic allowing you to access the stores and restaurants along that stretch.

[Source: Downtown Evansville / Downtown Evansville on Facebook]