The Michigan Department of Transportation will hold another open house on its plans to reconstruct Main Street in downtown St. Joseph next month.
The project is slated for 2027, and MDOT’s Nick Schirripa tells us the plan for exactly how things will be changed is still coming together. After multiple meetings with residents so far, MDOT’s coming back on Monday, June 2 to show everyone the latest.
“Presenting them with essentially a finalized design concept,” Schirripa said. “We’re breaking that into several steps, so instead of coming back with a final design concept, we’re coming back kind of intermittently with updated design concepts, and that’s where we are now.”
Schirripa says residents have shown a great interest in the project throughout the planning stage. It’s not surprising, given that this is a once in a generation rebuild of a town’s Main Street.
“We’re working through people’s business community, people’s living community. So this is a little bit different for us. And it’s a pretty big project. We don’t do very many redesigns or rebuilds, and this is one of those. So there are a couple of things that kind of come together to make this a generational project.”
MDOT staff will be at St. Joseph City Hall June 2 from 4:30 to 6:30 to talk with residents about the latest.
Right now, Schirripa says the plan is to rebuild the M-63/I-94 Business Loop and change Port Street and Ship Street to two-way streets. They’re one-way now. Also, with paid parking now in effect downtown, Schirripa says there will be improvements to pedestrian crossings. However, he says the paid parking has nothing to do with MDOT. That was strictly a city decision.
