Civil Municipal Magazine - Dec 2023

192 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 12 to reduce traffic and drive times between the two areas, which City Administrator Chad Hoerth believes will make New London more attractive to residents as an area to live in. “We think that people are going to be looking at New London as a great location because of our great house, school district, and cost of living compared to the metro area,” Hoerth says. Going further inward, the city is spearheading work for ‘main street’, named North Water Street, which is the central core of New London’s downtown. This two- year reconstruction will also happen in tandem with scheduled sanitary sewer replacements so that the changes will occur both above and below ground. “Making sure our downtown is thriving is very important, so we’ve taken steps to improve the public side of it,” Hoerth says, commenting on the minute yet impactful changes that are being made. A prime example of this would be the extension of the city’s current parking lot and the widening of North Water Street’s sidewalk by a foot and a half to promote pedestrian traffic and outside dining for local restaurants. Residents, as well as the city’s businesses, are the primary beneficiaries of this reconstruction. So, to ensure that these changes resonate as greatly as possible, the chamber leadership has made sure to conduct significant public outreach to collect feedback on the types of changes people want to see. “We’ve had some open houses to collect feedback to see: what’s the vision [people] want to see the downtown turn into? A modern downtown… do you want to see more of a historic, vintage-type downtown?” Hoerth comments, confirming that the feedback was overwhelmingly in favor of a traditional, small-town aesthetic. With so many changes scheduled to