As a very frequent walker, I almost never walk from downtown to the waterfront using Hall Street and I rarely see anyone else doing so.
Mostly, people use Ward Street, merging onto Front Street at City Hall, which is a far gentler grade.
A few more minutes to walk this way is well worth the time. On hotter days, this route quite often gets a lake breeze which the upper portion, the steepest part, of Hall Street usually does not.
Walking downstairs or downhill on pavement is hard on joints and tendons and hiking up a street like Hall Street can be very difficult.
As it is written on the City of Nelson’s website:
“One of the main goals of the City of Nelson’s forward thinking Sustainable Waterfront and Downtown Master Plan, completed in 2011, is to establish strong pedestrian connections between historic Baker Street and the city’s beautiful lakefront.”
I sincerely wonder if any amount of work on Hall Street is going to promote many pedestrians to desire the type of hardship associated with walking up and down one of our steepest hills downtown.
If this major face lift goes ahead, I’ll likely still be meandering past City Hall instead of busting a gut up and down Hall Street no matter how nice the landscape architecture is.
What do you think you will do?
Josh Wapp
Nelson
