Detroit creating a plaza by closing Woodward at Jefferson

John Gallagher | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption This Detroit intersection is getting makeover pedestrians will love This video shows how a new pedestrian plaza opening soon at Woodward and Jefferson is joining other recent installations aimed at making downtown a more walkable, pedestrian-frienly place.

The City of Detroit will close the key intersection of Woodward at Jefferson Avenue beginning this evening to create a people's plaza complete with food trucks and other amenities.

It marks the city's latest bid to fashion a lively streetscape along Woodward Avenue in the blocks near Campus Martius Park. The plaza will expand the recently added esplanade, or walkway, running south from Campus Martius to Larned.

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Creating the plaza means motorists will no longer be able to turn north onto Woodward from Jefferson or south to Jefferson from Woodward. But Janet Attarian, deputy director of the city's planning department, said a livelier streetscape is worth the trade-off in lost motor vehicle access.

"We have been slowly but surely looking at all the open space along Woodward and making Woodward a wonderful walkable space and really connect it to the riverfront," she said. "We felt for a number of reasons that having a people's plaza was really important and fill that missing gap right in front of city hall and the county building."

Because motorists will no longer be trying to turn at that intersection, traffic flow along Jefferson itself may actually be improved, she said.

"We recognize that there'll be some impact to traffic patterns, but there are so many alternate routes," she said. "We believe it will not be overly burdensome, and it will also provide better movement along Jefferson itself."

A rendering provided by the city shows that the entire street between Jefferson and Larned in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center will be transformed into the plaza.

Work will proceed quickly. The intersection will be closed to traffic this evening, and the new plaza will open to the public Monday morning. The plaza is scheduled as a 90-day trial. The city will evaluate the results after that.

By creating the plaza over just a few days, it thus follows the "lighter, cheaper, quicker" mantra for urban revitalization promoted by the Project for Public Spaces, a New York-based consultant hired by businessman Dan Gilbert a few years ago to help enliven the streetscape around Gilbert's dozens of downtown real estate holdings.

The new plaza, the esplanade, the recently opened QLINE and the new MoGo bike sharing program all have helped make the lower Woodward corridor an example of walkable urbanism, a densely occupied district that reduces the role of motor vehicles.

The plaza will include artwork, food trucks, seating, and landscaping, as well as formal programming in the form of music or other events several times a week. The city designed it in partnership with the Philadelphia-based design firm Groundswell, which designed the new esplanade and has a Detroit office, and the civic group Downtown Detroit Partnership.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.