Grand Falls-Windsor hosts public forum on Trans-Canada Highway corridor

The Trans-Canada Highway and the entrance to Cromer Avenue in Grand Falls-Windsor is receiving a lot of attention these days. 
The town wants to improve the highway right of way as it moves through Cromer Avenue to encourage tourists to come and see what the town has to offer. 
To do that, the town has tasked TRACT Consulting with composing a plan to address that issue and anything else that might arise when looking at the process. 
“We’re always trying to bring more people into Grand Falls-Windsor,” said Mayor Barry Manuel at the start of a gathering Tuesday night. “We want to make sure we’re getting more people into the community.” 
At Joe Byrne Memorial Arena, a dozen or so people from the community, including town councillors, the area’s newly elected MHA and residents, debated and discussed the best ways to encourage people to stop. 
Led by TRACT’s Neil Dawe and Nese Ersoy, the idea was to crowd-source ideas that the group could use to influence their plan. 
Grand Falls-Windsor is targeting people who intend to drive through the divided highway that runs through the community without stopping in the community. Visitors already planning to visit the community will spend their money at the shops, restaurants and gas stations as a matter of course. The town wants to hook people who plan to skip Grand Falls-Windsor. 
The public consultation Tuesday night is just a small component of the town's strategy. Some 500 people took part in a survey on the subject, while a meeting with community business leaders is planned for next week. 
The hope is to give TRACT enough information to provide a solid plan for addressing the problem. 
Ideas varied. There was some desire to see the concrete slabs that separate the east and west corridors of the highway removed; others thought the desire to stop and explore the town started with the placement of a gas station or restaurant on the highway. 
When it comes to Cromer Avenue, in particular, surveyed residents identified pedestrian safety and better connection to the rest of the town via walking and biking trails as high priorities. 
They also pointed to better landscaping and beautifying abandoned storefronts as ways the town could draw people.
There was discussion about promoting a theme for the community, that would tie the town together as streets could start to mirror each other by design. 
As the meeting drew to a close, it was suggested that any process for drawing people into the community should include beautification of the clover that defines the connection between the highway and Cromer Avenue. 
While that would include getting the provincial government involved, the general consensus was that if anything was to get done, the clover needs to be included. 
“We have to give them something to slow down for,” said Dawe.