YOUR AD HERE »

Frisco launches planning efforts to revamp Main, Granite streets

The sun rises over Main Street in Frisco in January 2020.
Todd Powell/Town of Frisco

FRISCO — Frisco is pushing forward with a pair of projects meant to set the stage for the future development of the town’s core area.

Last year, the Frisco Town Council made a point to prioritize two projects tightly bound to the core area, namely the development of a Main Street Vision Plan and a redesign of Granite Street. On Wednesday, the town issued requests for proposals for the two projects, hoping to have clear outlook on the concepts by later this year.

While the plans are distinct, town staff believe the close geographical relationship between the two areas along with their importance to the 2019 Frisco Community Plan can help to create cohesion throughout the planning and community outreach process.



“These two (requests for proposals) were born out of the Community Plan as well as four of council’s strategic goals,” Frisco planner Susan Lee said. “During the Community Plan public process, the community was very clear about the importance of Main Street and the surrounding area, and throughout these upcoming planning processes, residents will have opportunities to provide even more specific feedback about the future of these areas.”

The Main Street plan, called the “2020 Main Street Vision: From the Mountains to the Marina,” will take a deep dive into the town’s predominant economic driver and transportation corridor from Summit Boulevard to Exit 201, with the goal of assuring any future development projects are sensitive to Frisco’s character while promoting a balanced economy.



Frisco’s Main Street was singled out in last year’s community plan update, reinforcing the town and public’s desire to see the thoroughfare further established as the virtual heart of the area “from the mountains to the lake.”

According to the requests for proposals, the plan will seek to analyze existing economic strengths and opportunities for growth, evaluate land uses, explore the development of more attractive gateway areas, create recommendations for historic structures and more.

“This is fulfilling a number of council’s goals,” Frisco Marketing and Communications Director Vanessa Agee said. “The visioning process is looking at the area’s economic development potential and the character of Main Street and how to keep those two things in harmony.

“And it will be a heavily public process, asking citizens to help us figure out what they want Main Street to look like in the future. Obviously, we already went through a redesign with Step Up Main Street. That’s not what this is about. This is about the gateways, telling people there’s cool stuff ahead. And what is the cool stuff in the middle? What do citizens want to see there, and what don’t they want to see?”

The Granite Street plan calls for a redesign of the roadway to better facilitate future changes in the area — including the completion of the Colorado Department of Transportation’s “Gap Project,” which will widen Colorado Highway 9 between Main Street and Recreation Way — with a special focus on accommodating multimodal transportation and making the roadway more attractive to cyclists and pedestrians.

The plan will include a multimodal circulation analysis — studying existing parking, pedestrian, bus and bike patterns — in addition to a traffic analysis and redesign concepts for improved sidewalks, bike lanes, landscaping, traffic calming elements and more.

“The Granite plan is much more about structural questions than character and economic development,” Agee said. “… It hit me this morning when I was driving to work on Granite Street. I saw a family come across the middle of the block between Second and Third avenues, and they didn’t have a clear crosswalk or sidewalk or anywhere to go. … That’s what council is looking at — making it easier to use different kinds of transportation, and creating sidewalks and routes for bikes that are safe and clear.”

Both plans will draw from existing blueprints laid out in the Marina Master Plan, Frisco Trails Master Plan, Climate Action Plan and reports from the Frisco Housing task Force and Summit Combined Housing Authority among other existing documents. Proposals for the contracts are due in early March, and the plans are expected to take between six and nine months to complete.


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

As a Summit Daily News reader, you make our work possible.

Summit Daily is embarking on a multiyear project to digitize its archives going back to 1989 and make them available to the public in partnership with the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. The full project is expected to cost about $165,000. All donations made in 2023 will go directly toward this project.

Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a difference.