RACINE - The plan to redevelop the Root River is done, yet it's only a beginning, and what city aldermen learned on Tuesday evening was that this potential will take time to develop.

Prepared over the past year by the River Alliance of Wisconsin with the aid of the volunteer Root River Council, the plan lays out a vision for what the river should be. This plan is mostly about public use and the creation of a public space.

Redeveloping the land, bringing in new businesses or deciding where to develop more housing was already a part of the Downtown plan completed a couple of years ago, said Allison Werner of the River Alliance during a meeting with The Journal Times editorial board. The current plan addresses the facets of river development not addressed in that plan.

The plan goal discuss improving the bike trail by moving one section off busy Mound Avenue and down along the riverbank; about creating a river walk on the opposite shore which would tie in to the walk already in place; about adding some boat launches for nonmotorized craft; and about creating a public art project to hide the sheer steel wall which holds up one side of Azarian Park on Water Street.

There is also the Belle Harbor Marina which is immediately to the west of the Main Street bridge. It's not used because it's full of silt, Werner said. The suggestion, drawn from previous plans, is to fill in most of the boat slips and create a public space with a public boat launch and perhaps a few slips.

"The city has done a great job for the last couple decades orienting ourselves to the lake, right? … But we really felt the river was this great asset the city has that we're really not fully utilizing in terms of economic development," said state Rep. Cory Mason, a member of the river council. Development will admittedly be a challenge, he and Werner said, because the channel is well below street level, is not easily accessible and because people need a reasons to go there.

"This is a long-term plan," Werner said. "This isn't going to be tomorrow. … just like the Downtown plan, these are ideas that as these properties turn over these would then show what could happen."

"It's not the end of a process either," Mason said. At the end of another year, we would know more of the details, the obstacles and the costs. For the moment this plan is a vision, and the people who assembled it hope the city will adopt it and allow work to continue.

Some of the work does not require the work of experts. Citizens can do it, Werner said. That step will start on July 29 with a public meeting to discover what projects citizens most want to do. "What we're prepared to do then is help work groups form around those issues so they're supported."

"That's part of what we like about this," she said, "is it's not just a bureaucratic process of doing more engineering design kind of stuff. People really could start tomorrow on some of these things.

"There's so much value with our urban rivers, as well a population base," she said. "There's a lot of people who right here could be using these urban rivers if they were improved just a little bit more."

Get involved

A public meeting on July 29 will allow citizens to learn about projects on which they can work as part of the Root River redevelopment. The meeting will last from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Root River Environmental Education and Community Center, 1301 Sixth St. in Racine. That's immediately east of the railroad overpass.