Plans were to reduce the traffic to four lanes, study the traffic problems and come up with a way to get pedestrians across the road to businesses safely.
But on February 23, Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani led the County Commission to delay that study indefinitely. "We already know we've got a [traffic] problem there, so it didn't make sense to me to make people miserable for several months in order to find out that we've got a traffic problem," Giunchigliani said in the Review-Journal. The traffic study was a major part of the project, and cancelling it seemingly put the entire Midtown dream in jeopardy.
But for Saltman, who has invested millions of dollars of his own money in this venture, Giunchigliani's opposition to the temporary study does not signal the end—in fact, he says, it's opened up new doors by broadening the scope of the project.
"[Commissioner Giunchigliani] is ... opposed to the temporary Maryland Parkway demonstration project [but] looking for longer-term planning and solutions," Saltman says. "We are now in a major regional planning stage working closely with the County Commission." Planners are considering traffic-flow issues all around the area now, as far north of the university as Sahara Avenue.
But for a project that has received little or no interference from county officials since its original conception nearly four years ago, Giunchigliani's actions have business owners in the area concerned—they're banking on getting more people across that street.
Otto Miller, owner of Otto's Malt Shop inside of the Promenade shopping center, says that as long as the busy parkway remains an obstacle for students to safely cross, businesses in the area will continue to struggle.
"It's dangerous and a hassle to cross Maryland Parkway," Miller says. "I mean, students shouldn't have to put their lives at risk to go across a street."
Vince Verderame, co-owner of It's Yoga, said he was disappointed about the decision to delay the Maryland traffic study.
"The positives of narrowing the street to four lanes lies in getting 30,000 people to cross it to get somewhere," Verderame says. "If they can [narrow the street], we can get those people over here to come to our businesses, and that's what we want."