The Hillsborough Street Partnership kick-started discussions Saturday with a public forum on the future of Hillsborough Street to elicit feedback on what to do with $3 million of rennovation funding.

The forum was intended as a way for the Hillsborough Street Partnership to expose its ideas to the public, and get feedback and input from community members.

Mayor Charles Meeker greeted attendees and said that the day signified the beginning of the implementation of the plan to improve Hillsborough Street, a day they had all waited on for years.

He stressed the importance of this initial renovation, because he said he thought that once the public sector contributed to the community, the private sector most certainly would.

“The idea here is to make public investment get things started,” he said.

The University has teamed up with the city to get things moving on the project, and Chancellor James Oblinger expressed the University’s eagerness to help.

“We’re very excited about being partners here,” he said. “It is our front door, Hillsborough Street.”

George Chapman, the chair of the executive board of the Hillsborough Street Partnership, gave a short presentation explaining the importance of renovating Hillsborough Street, highlighting the impact it would have on the community.

He emphasized the need for pedestrian safety, and the boom in business he said he hoped would occur with the changes.

All but two of the six different plans for Hillsborough Street include a heavy incorporation of roundabouts into the traffic plan. It’s a plan Katina Thompson and BenJetta Johnson, from the N.C. Department of Transportation, said would benefit the community.

They explained that a roundabout is generally much smaller than a traffic circle, with one to two lanes, and that while a traffic circle usually has some sort of attraction in the center, roundabout centers are used for decorative purposes.

That means pedestrians have no need to cross to the center, and this makes them much safer, they said.

“Safety is one of the number one things for roundabouts,” Thompson said.

Roundabouts also eliminate the need for left turns, and while that means drivers may have to go out of their way to get where they are going, traffic will flow much smoother.

Oblinger said he was impressed with the presentation, stating he liked “the looks of the roundabouts.”

Attendants then broke into groups and visited six stations, each with a different plan for improvement.

After people had been given the opportunity to see each plan and ask questions, they were put into four focus groups to talk about the positive and negative aspects of the plans, and give insight into anything they thought should be done differently.

Afterward, group results were discussed, and among the biggest concerns were accommodations made for public transit, parking, pedestrian safety and business loading zones. Hybrids of some plans were even proposed.

Participants were then able to vote on their favorite plan.

Oblinger said input from attendees was vital to the improvement plan.

“We’re really here to listen. We really want your perspectives, what perhaps your expectations would be, what your hopes and aspirations might be,” Oblinger said. “This is a really important project.”

Ryan Powell, graduate student in economics, said he was glad to see the methods in which the improvements of Hillsborough Street were being decided, such as the forum, although he said he felt more students should be involved.

A member of the partnerships executive board, Powell said he became involved with the group after writing an article for SPLAT magazine about the project.

“It’s my first year as a graduate student here, and when I arrived I just sort of looked at Hillsborough Street, right next to a campus with 30,000 students, and thought there’s some sort of underlying structural problem,” he said.

Bridgette Holley is a senior in business management, and she said she attended the meeting to get an update on the changes to Hillsborough Street.

“I’m here just to see what they have in store,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about roundabouts.”

She said she felt the growth of business on Hillsborough Street was very encouraging, and spoke in favor of the project.

“I remember coming in as a freshman, and by sophomore year a lot of businesses like Starbucks had closed down,” Holley said. “But this year has been amazing with all the new businesses.”

Chapman said he felt confident that the day went well, and that good results would come of it.

“What we were hoping to do was get some active involvement, good discussion; and I think we’ve done that,” he said, “It will help us as a partnership sort through these different projects.”

Although Holley will be graduating this year, she said the Hillsborough Street Project is still important to her, and that she would still “like to see it revitalized.” She said she is excited about “having a place where everybody can come together.”

The Partnership will present the chosen plan to the city council at its first meeting in April, and Meeker said that after the council makes its decision, building would begin by late 2006 or early 2007.