Travel Log: Hutchison Kansas

I’ve been back in St. Louis since late Sunday but I am still trying to get caught up on all the towns I visited last week. I’ve already posted about small towns around Kansas City, St. Joseph Missouri, Shenandoah Iowa, Salina Kansas, Garden City Kansas and here we are at Hutchison KS.

One of the most striking buildings in Hutchison was the Reno County courthouse. We could see the building on the horizon and drove straight towards it but we ended up getting redirected by some over-engineered highway-like exit loop. Some traffic engineer must have been let loose on this town because they’ve got some highway stuff going on that only a bigger city might need (might is the key word). See google maps to see the roads.

The courthouse is located on West 1st street, shown above. Unfortunately, the width of the street is massive with parking on both sides and in the middle. Of course, I’d prefer to see parking spread out like this rather than in a parking lot but this sorta felt like a parking lot.

To the right of this image is actually a large parking lot — remains from an old downtown mall. Not an outdoor pedestrian mall, but an early 1-level indoor mall. It looked to be most vacant at this point. In typical fasion, the mall managed to close off a street of the grid. The circular exit loop mentioned above is just behind the mall — all very visible in the google map link above.

Next door to the lovely county courthouse is a very typical building style of the late 60s, early 70s. This extension to the courthouse includes police and other services. Note how the rough concrete just welcomes you in.

A few of the buildings over on Main Street were beautifully detailed and tall relative to other towns. We were there last Friday afternoon and the town was pretty dead. Due to limited time, we did a quick drive through the main street rather than walk the length of the street.

This spectacular building was the most elaborate on Main St.

Main Street Hutchison was actually in the process of getting a brand new streetscape — new sidewalks, planters, seating and such. A critics dream! As you can see, they’ve gone with a serpentine shape for the concrete seating.

Above is another of the new corners with new plantings, sidewalks, and built-in seating.

Up ahead the road is narrowed considerably as construction crews are finishing up the new project.

New walls had just been finished on this corner.

Another block or so south and it appears that Hutchison has had a streetscape makeover program before. Here the sidewalks are concrete with a single band of decorative pavers and a different style of seating and light fixtures. Could it be this is already being done again? Actually this concrete looks pretty new as well. However, they are indeed remaking a street which was done probably in the 1970s or 80s.

From the Hutchison Shopping Guide:

Our award-winning Downtown Hutchinson is located in the heart of Hutchinson, Kansas and is often called the Paris of the Plains….
Downtown will soon be implementing landscape architectural plans for a new streetscape concept for the Main Street area to incorporate more green areas.

Hutchison does have a regional mall with several anchor stores and an 8-screen theatre – that would explain why Main Street was so dead. It is quite sad that they don’t realize you can’t simply keep installing new brick paving patterns to revitalize a downtown. The downtown chamber puts a positive spin on things (as these groups tend to do), from an April 2005 newsletter:

Congratulations to the Downtown Hutchinson Redevelopment District – StreetScape is underway! Exciting times are ahead as downtown Hutchinson is revitalized.

Exciting times? The street is still way too wide relative to the heights of the buildings. They don’t have enough shade trees (this is the middle of Kansas) and again pretty brick paving patterns will not revitalize a downtown when everyone is heading to the Wal-Mart and regional shopping mall.

Maybe this makeover is in response to ADA compliance? My regular readers know I harp often about ADA compliance and many are likely rolling their eyes as they read this. Well, it seems in the early 1990s Hutchison was investigated by the Department of Justice regarding ADA issues. The agreement covered a number of public facilities and did not specifically address Main Street. You can read the Settlement Agreement for yourself for detail.

I plan to return to Hutchison in a year or so to see how the new streetscape has reviltalized the downtown. For more information on Hutchison see the wiki entry and more images on my Flickr account.