Downtown street closures set for Monday

By Junious Smith III

Several downtown streets will be closed over the next few weeks, but businesses will remain open.

On Monday, Queen Street will close all traffic between Gordon and King starting Monday for construction work. In a message from Kinston Public Services, the work was described as being associated with the Queen Street Streetscape Project. The contractor will be installing diagonal parking spaces, extending pedestrian areas and installing concrete pavement during the closure.

“These blocks are expected to be closed for four to six weeks. All side streets will be open … and pedestrian access will be maintained to all businesses in each block every day,” the message stated.

Kinston City Manager Tony Sears said the patience of the community is needed as the final stages of the project are put into place.

“We’re birthing the baby right now,” Sears said. “We’ve had a lot of labor pains and have worked for 18 months on things such as water lines, sewer lines and storm drain repair. We’re at the end and the project is still moving on schedule. We plan to be finished by August or September, and we understand this is an inconvenience to the community, along with downtown businesses.

“What we ask is for a little more time as we finish off the final parts of this important project.”

Kinston Mayor Don Hardy said the city wants to finish the project swiftly and effectively with as little inconvenience as possible.

“We’re trying to regulate traffic flow as best as we can to make sure there’s access from one side of the city to another,” Hardy said. “We want to have this squared away as quickly as possible, while we do our part to complete this project with hopes to attract tourism and commerce to Kinston.”

Kinston Planning Director Adam Short said downtown businesses may be affected some, but Pride of Kinston is making efforts to bring awareness.

“Pride of Kinston has done a wonderful job on its site keeping people informed,” Short said. “We want to get this done as soon as possible and we understand downtown businesses provide the lifeblood to the area. Ultimately, we want this to be a minor blip down the road for a thriving community.”

Leon Steele, executive director of Pride of Kinston, said the organization is doing its best to get the message out.

“We have large banners on several barricades that say ‘Queen Street is open for business,’” Steele said. “We have two on King Street and will have two more going up on Queen Street. We also have a lot of videos on Facebook showing out downtown businesses and have radio ads on the Beach, Boogie and Blues station, which have run all week long. The sidewalks are open for pedestrians, and we want the community to step up and support the businesses downtown.

“Fortunately, this project is a quick one.”