City officials are considering to put Conant on a ‘diet’

City officials are hoping to get a grant to study possible redesigns for Conant to make it look more attractive and slow down traffic. But not all city officials are in favor of making any changes.

By Charles Sercombe
Does Conant look fat to you?
According to some folks in the Community Economic Development Department — and the city manager — it needs to go on a diet. And by “diet,” they mean that lanes need to be narrowed, in order to force drivers to slow down.
Road diets have become a traffic redesign that is all the rage – and we don’t mean road rage – in urban design circles.
City Manager Max Garbarino said “This is a hope for a start that could be a very beautiful streetscape for Conant.”
Recently, a presentation was made by the CED to the city council that illustrated some ideas for the new look. These included widening sidewalks, extending curbs, creating more crosswalks and planting trees.
Currently, there are no trees on the street.
The redesign will involve getting input from community members, Conant business owners and elected officials.
Karolynn Faulkner, the Manager of the CED, said that, because part of Conant is owned by Wayne County and another part by Detroit, it would take about two years before any actual work on the street could begin.
In the meantime, the city is applying for a $2-$3 million grant to begin the design process.
Faulkner said the aim is to give the street “a downtown look.”
Garbarino said that, as of now, “Conant looks kind of blah.”
Businesses, he said, “would be ecstatic” with a new look.
So far, city officials have some reservations.
Mayor Amer Ghalib said he would already say “no to bike lanes, no to parking meters, no to narrowing the street. That’s something we don’t agree on.”
Garbarino said there are no plans to install parking meters on Conant, and if he had it his way, he’d take an axe and cut down the meters on Jos. Campau.
Councilmember Mohammed Hassan was more outspoken in his opposition to any changes to Conant.
He insisted that business owners “want to keep it as is.” Making any change, Hassan said, “would be a complete disaster. … For 100 years there’s been no issue. We are wasting our time.”
Garbarino assured Hassan that “nothing is going to go there without your (the mayor and council) approval. End of story.”
Conant as a business district has come a long way since the 1980s, when the street was filled with empty storefronts. It was a ghost town, a cruel reminder of a once-bustling business district that went bust.
But, as the Bengali community grew in the neighborhoods near Conant, businesses started popping up, eventually making Conant once again a thriving business district.
Because of the influence of Bengali business owners, Conant was given the honorific renaming of “Bangladeshi Ave.”
The Conant proposal comes after there has been much discussion about the slight redesign of Jos. Campau over the last several years, particularly the recent addition of bike lanes, and the loss of a few on-street parking spots on Jos. Campau and Goodson that city officials say has lead to a loss of a business for a few stores in that area.
The Jos. Campau bike lane is a complicated matter.
It’s part of an overall regional plan, called the Greenway Project, that connects Hamtramck with Detroit, Dearborn and Highland Park with a bike lane that runs through all the communities.
It’s been largely funded by federal dollars, and it’s expected to be finished in a few years.
Some city councilmembers would rather scrap the project and pull Hamtramck out of it, or at least redesign the bike path so it doesn’t impact those businesses on Jos. Campau and Goodson.
That is easier said than done, since it involves a number of other governmental layers outside of Hamtramck.
However, City Manager Max Garbarino and his administration have come up with a compromise that would keep the bike lane intact, although narrowed down.
That would allow parking spaces to be created on the outside of the bike lane, and also would narrow the street to slow down traffic.
Not only that, but the plan also calls for installing slanted parking spots in front of Veterans Park, which is near Goodson, to create more parking, as well as for installing more crosswalks.
The concept of having bike lanes run along the curb of a street and have parking outside of it has not gone over smoothly in some other communities – notably in Ferndale, on Woodward starting at 9 Mile.
Motorists complain that it’s confusing, and some drivers end up driving in the bike lanes thinking it’s permitted.
City officials there say, however, that it will only be a matter of time before motorists get used to the concept.
Posted April 5, 2024