Annapolis' Historic District Commission is likely to approve a scaled-down version of the city's Main Street reconstruction plan next week that could prevent restaurants from opening sidewalk cafes.
The commission, which must approve all development downtown, agreed at a work session Monday to approve the city's plan, if the sidewalk width at two proposed pedestrian gathering places at the foot of Main Street is reduced and two other relatively minor changes are made. The commission is to vote on the project Dec. 14
"I think we're moving into the final phase on Main Street," said Donna Hole, a city historic preservation planner who serves as staff to the commission.
The potential for sidewalk cafes has been near the center of the battle over the $5 million face lift. Downtown residents complain that the plan would turn the picturesque street into an overrun pedestrian mall and that the cafes would contribute to noise, trash and aggravation.
But restaurant owners say the reconstruction plan would make Main Street a natural place for dining alfresco and more inviting ,, to customers.
City officials, who planned to start work in January, feared that the project could be jeopardized if commission approval were delayed.
In addition to reducing sidewalk width, the commission told the city to limit tree plantings to the bottom half of Main Street and place a utility vault under a traffic island in the middle of the street instead of under a widened sidewalk.
The project, half of which is being paid for by the state, involves burying overhead utility lines, planting trees, adding benches, widening the sidewalks in some spots and covering the 300-year-old street with new, red bricks from City Dock to Church Circle.
The commission hotly criticized the city's original Main Street plan, which proposed much wider sidewalks and large pedestrian gathering areas on several street corners. But in the last few weeks the city has reworked the plan, and at a public meeting last week it formally presented to the commission a compromise that omitted the most controversial elements.
All that's left for the city to do is make some minor changes to its compromise blueprint, said Emory Harrison, director of Central Services who is overseeing the Main Street project.
"We're getting there, one brick at a time," he said.