Commercial Curb Appeal

What a year 2020 has been for all of us!  Between the ‘Rona, “Karen”, politics and proceeding elections it’s hard to remember hearing or reading anything positive from the news. 

As I was tasked with writing the blog for this month, I found myself thinking about how easy it is to write something about the negative things we want to clean-up or enforce in the community, and how we’ve always written these blogs/editorials in the past to focus on residential issues.  But as I drove through town, going site-to-site the other day, I was quickly reminded about all of the positive commercial improvements we’ve helped with over the last few years in the Community Development Department

For the last six (6) years our City Engineer, James Burroughs, and I have worked very diligently in enforcing driveway accesses for traffic safety and the Zoning Ordinance regulations as passed by your City Council.  While the regulations don’t always apply to what people want, at the end of the projects we’ve found that these regulations, as expected, create added safety and enhanced curb appeal.  I’m specifically talking about our Access Management Plan and Article Eight in the Zoning Ordinance, which requires front yard landscaping and buffer yards. 

The enforcement of these rules has the community of Beatrice headed in the right direction in terms of development, safe traffic flow, and improving our overall curb appeal.  If you want a visual to go along with these words, I suggest you drive by some of the more recently developed/redeveloped/renovated businesses to take a look. 

• Schoen’s Roofing at the intersection of South 6th Street and Perkins Street: Schoen’s worked with the City to comply with the rules on both sites, as they’ve added the required landscaping brightening up the intersection.  Schoen’s also reduced their access points for better and safer traffic flow. 
• Oakview Vet Clinic at the intersection of 19th Street and Ella Street: Oakview and their architect worked with the City to remove an unnecessary access point on 19th Street, making for safer traffic flow, and improved their curb appeal by adding to their green space. 
• Taco John’s on North 6th Street: During redevelopment, Taco John’s worked with the City to reduce access points onto 6th Street, creating a much safer traffic situation; and removed concrete in the right-of-way and replaced it with the required landscaping.
• Casey’s General Store at the intersection of North 6th Street and Arthur Street: During a renovation and expansion project they removed an access point and added greens pace to their property. 
• Dairy Queen at the intersection of East Court Street and South 9th Street: Dairy Queen redesigned their entire parking lot and drive-thru, which eliminated access points, and improved traffic flow and safety on 9th Street (and Court Street).  In the process they added landscaping and greens pace in the right-of-way to soften the curb appeal. 
• Blackstone Storage at the intersection of South 6th Street and Ames Street: They redeveloped multiple lots on this site and worked with the City to achieve landscaping requirements, and reduced their access points for safer traffic flow on the highway. 
• Nebraska Machine and Tool at the intersection of South 2nd Street and Market Street: NMT removed rock and concrete and added greens pace and landscaping to soften their curb appeal, a nice subtle change to their industrial area. 

As I look back at this list, coincidentally, I noticed that all of these projects were redevelopments or renovations, which always present added difficulty because we’re trying to mesh old lots and old development to new rules.  But, at the end of the day all of these projects turned out great!  Most importantly the business owners, contractors, architects, engineers, City staff, and everyone in between were great to work with, and proved how well we can work together to achieve great things for individuals, businesses, and our community!

Thank you to all of those who continue to move the community of Beatrice in the right direction.

Rob Mierau
Community Development Director