Sisters nixes concrete, goes for asphalt road redo

The city of Sisters is changing its plans for next year’s scheduled road work, thanks to some active and vocal business owners.

Downtown merchants urged the city to reject plans to use concrete, rather than asphalt, to redo Cascades Avenue.

The city and ODOT originally planned on using more durable concrete for six blocks of Highway 20 right through downtown.

But that would have required a total shutdown of Cascades Avenue for up to five months — something business owners said they couldn’t afford.

Chris Wilder owns Sisters Log Furniture and Home Decor, a company with two locations down Sisters main thoroughfare.

Wilder said closing the road for months would kill his business and others, and he couldn’t stay silent.

“The Pole Creek Fire, I think woke up a lot of merchants,” Wilder said. “It was a reality check. ‘Wow — this is what two or three weeks of disruption could be, what could five or six months of disruption of closure be?'”

Wilder didn’t want to find out, and along with other business owners went to the city, asking for a new plan.

Last Thursday, all the petitions, speeches and negotiations paid off. The city council held a meeting on the matter, where it announced the city would go with a new asphalt option.

The asphalt will allow Cascades Avenue to mostly stay open and call for mostly night work.

” There was a round of applause for the city council and the Sisters staff,” Wilder said. “Chamber of Commerce was excited, and the merchant crew was very, very excited for it. So we still have a lot of homework to do, this kind of lays out, now we know the game plan.”

Wilder said he looks forward to continuing to work with the city on other aspects of the project, like where new benches and planters will go.

In addition to putting in a new road, the city is widening sidewalks, improving drainage and adding new light poles.

The project will cost about $6 million, and the city plans to formally approve it at another meeting this Thursday.