Dietrich Shares Some Ideas for Downtown

Village Trustee Tim Dietrich has some ideas of what the redesigned downtown area should look like.

Dietrich shares pictures with Sussex administrators and trustees Thursday from a recent trip he took to Montana and Colorado and what some communities have done to their downtown areas.

“It made you feel good,” Dietrich said of one of the downtown areas while showing pictures of art there. “It made you want to be there.”

Dietrich showed Sussex leaders the pictures Thursday to help them develop ideas for the design of the downtown area as they work to renovate Main Street in order to attract more people and businesses into the village.

The village is still working on a tax incremental financing district to pay for improvements along Main Street and craft a vision of what it could look like.

The pictures Dietrich showed Thursday included lots of public art or plants in downtown areas which were installed through public-private collaboration. In one example he showed businesses in a downtown area where owners planted hundreds of flowers in pots provided by the village.

“I thought to myself, 'My god, if I lived here I’d shop at the place with the most flowers,'” Dietrich said. “Because they put the most into the community.”