GUYMON DesignWorks
Texas County Health Department Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust Healthy Living Program City of Guymon OU Institute for Quality Communities
Summary In June 2017, the Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) traveled to Guymon, Oklahoma to work with the Texas County Health Department’s Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust Healthy Living Program, the City of Guymon, and local partners. Over a 48-hour period, the IQC team observed the downtown area and other important locations for walkability in the community. Guymon is a growing community of more than 12,000 people, the seat of Texas County, and the largest community in the Oklahoma panhandle nearly 300 miles from the state capitol. The agriculture industry has been a major driver of the economy, with Seaboard Foods processing plant employing thousands in the community. Many migrant workers have been attracted by jobs at Seaboard Foods, making Guymon a diverse community with residents and businesses that reflect Oklahoma culture and new additions from Central America, Africa, and more. With a relatively stable economy, Guymon has a number of community assets around town to support walking, jogging, cycling and healthy lifestyles. However, these destinations are not fully linked through the community to allow people to use active transportation as part of daily life. The recommendations in this report are the beginning of a campaign to support walking, biking, and jogging in Guymon. The campaign focuses on making downtown a hub for walkability with safe and comfortable links to walkable destinations.
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Add highway gateways directing people to downtown Celebrate the pedestrian character of downtown Create a wayfinding campaign originating in the heart of downtown Identify candidates for pilot street repair and traffic calming projects
Walkability and Health Growing evidence suggests that walkability in communities can support economic development, environmental health, and the level of participation and interaction from community members. Importantly for a state challenged with health issues like Oklahoma, a walkable community can also support healthy lifestyles and lead to reduced rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. For more on the correlation between health and community design, check out two video presentations at the IQC Placemaking Conference website, located at iqc.ou.edu/conference:
• Dr. Richard Jackson, “Healthy Communities” (2013) • Dr. Karen Lee, “Active Design for Healthy Places” (2015) Walkability is about more than just a sidewalk. For people to choose walking or biking as part of their daily transportation, notable city planner Jeff Speck says that those options should be safe, comfortable, interesting, and useful. “Safe” includes concerns about traffic speeds, separation from traffic, and crossings. “Comfortable” might include shade and limited noise from traffic. “Interesting” means there are things to look at and enjoy along the way. “Useful” means there are useful destinations in the walkable area. For more about walkability, check out Jeff Speck’s video presentation on the IQC Placemaking Conference website located at iqc.ou.edu/conference:
• Jeff Speck, AICP, “Walkable City” (2013) • Dan Burden, “Livable Communities (2013) • Gil Penalosa, “8 to 80 Cities” (2015)
Touring Guymon
Around the City
Main Street Storefronts
Mayor Kim Peterson led an excellent tour of Guymon for the team to better understand the community. Through this tour the team could better understand the location of important destinations and neighborhoods in Guymon. The team saw the locations and amenities of numerous parks, schools, health services, and employers. Additionally, the team toured the interior of new public projects like the Fire Station and Public Library.
A group of downtown stakeholders led a tour of Main Street. The downtown area has very few vacant storefronts, brick streets, and a recently completed streetscape project that serves as a gateway. The group also toured the interior of the American Theater, where local groups stage performances and events in the theater behind the iconic red, white, and blue sign. A fundraising plan is underway to restore the historic sign.
Wide Streets
Dale Hotel
Like many western Oklahoma communities, Guymon has some especially wide streets. Wide streets can be challenging and uncomfortable to cross on foot, and can even encourage people to drive too fast. Wide streets also represent an opportunity, because it is easy to preserve traffic flow while adding new uses and evolving the street to be more people-friendly.
The team peeked inside the recently renovated Dale Hotel, a successful historic preservation tax credit project that has added affordable housing and retail space in the heart of downtown. This project won a Citation of Merit at the 2017 Statewide Preservation Conference and set a new standard for preservation in Guymon. Having residents in downtown is important for the walkable character of the neighborhood.
Community Assets
Vibrant Downtown
Network of Parks
Downtown Guymon’s storefronts are all filled with interesting local businesses. As the team visited downtown Guymon, there were sidewalk sales and beautiful window displays. Many of the shops had nice displays, but were closed during much of the day.
Guymon has an impressive number of high quality parks and recreational facilities. The city has 65 acres of parks with playgrounds, walking trails, and sports facilities. These include the expansive Thompson Park with its beautiful Sunset Lake trail, as well as neighborhood parks dispersed through the community. The pedestrian connections and links to these parks should be improved for safe accessibility.
Active Community
Grid of Streets & Alleys
There is a lot happening in Guymon, and that means many opportunities to get involved with an activity or volunteer effort. From organized running groups and yoga classes, to fundraising committees for theaters and downtown programming, people are active in the community and engaging with their neighbors.
Guymon features a fine-grained grid of streets and alleys that help foster walkability. A grid network is more efficient at distributing vehicular traffic and allows maximum choice for getting from Point A to Point B in the shortest distance for pedestrians and cyclists. There are many quiet residential streets present in the grid that make a good alternative for walking and biking.
Community Meetings Key Ideas Two meetings were held with community stakeholders on Tuesday, June 13, to learn more about goals and ideas local residents have for walkability in Guymon. This page contains themes and ideas gathered from participants in the meeting, which strongly influenced the content of this report.
• Guymon has existing parks and recreational facilities that are assets for
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healthy living. They should be better connected to each other. When they are programmed with events and special activities, they are more successful. There are health and wellness services clustered around the North Park area, but there is also a cluster along Highway 54 that is difficult to access without a vehicle. Many people cycle long distances for recreation, so a longer-distance trail would complement this activity. Additionally, by connecting the existing trail resources through the community with bike lanes, you could extend the distance people could bike. It is difficult to maintain the existing streets and infrastructure. Adding bike lanes may require a trade-off of parking on some streets. For people to engage with recreation, it needs to be easily accessible without even thinking about it. It also needs promotion. The city does not have a dedicated grant programmer or a staff person who would be tasked with programming public spaces.
Why do you walk?
What keeps you from walking?
How would you improve things?
Because it’s a slower pace where you can enjoy the view, notice the architecture, get ideas about landscaping, and get a sense of how the community is doing.
It doesn’t feel safe enough with cars driving by quickly and with drivers who sometimes don’t pay attention. There is often no separation from traffic or sidewalk. Some people give you strange looks. The weather is a factor as well.
Adding signage, adding temporary installation or trial infrastructure, marking bicycle paths, creating multi-use trail systems, creating town gateways and wayfinding, slowing down traffic, making people aware of opportunities for active lifestyle.
Meeting participants took to the streets to practice installing test versions of traffic calming and crosswalk features that might work for Guymon’s widest streets.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Add highway gateways directing people to downtown. Guymon is accessed by several important US highways, including US-412, US-54, and US-64. These highways carry tens of thousands of vehicles within or through Guymon each day, making them an ideal location to welcome people to take a detour and stop by downtown. With no signage to indicate the direction of downtown from some of these key highways, visitors may have trouble finding the walkable heart of Guymon. Where these highways meet streets that carry people to downtown, like Main Street and Northwest 12th, special care should be taken to show that a destination is nearby. These signs can also remind long-time locals to stop by downtown.
US-412
US-64
US-54 US-412
Pieces of the Puzzle Simple signage can play a role in helping people get downtown. The example shown here is one concept for signage at four corners of the community pointing toward downtown. Guymon has four wards that meet each other downtown, with each ward holding some of downtown’s special places. In this concept, signs are imagined as puzzle pieces that highlight a piece of downtown and point people there. Intersections and Streetscapes The streetscape project where the south part of Main Street intersects with US-54 is a great example of a gateway that draws attention into the downtown area. Highway intersections are a great place to upgrade the appearance of the street with landscaping or public art, as part of projects that add safe crosswalks so that people on foot can cross the highway comfortably.
Celebrate the pedestrian character of downtown. When people are moving on foot, details are important! There is more time to notice the little things that fill a street with life. In downtown Guymon, there are important details still preserved that other communities wish they still had. There are also some things that could be celebrated and enhanced fairly inexpensively. Brick streets along Main Street contribute to the area’s sense of place and also help designate the area as a walkable historic district. The group discussed that brick streets can come with maintenance challenges. Brick streets can still be found in Davenport, Seminole, Guthrie, Holdenville, Elk City, and Pauls Valley. Ponca City has an extensive network of historic brick streets. Brick streets are a premium street feature passed down from previous generations, and may be worth the maintenance challenges.
Ghost signs are murals and advertisements painted decades ago on downtown buildings, and they’re worth preserving. Some communities preserve them in the current, weathered state, and others accurately restore them. Guymon has several ghost signs that have been preserved into our time, and these details help make walking downtown more interesting.
Covered sidewalks are a unique feature of downtown Guymon that provide shade for people who are shopping and dining downtown. These canopies also provide a nice place for signage, as shown in the image.
Sidewalk amenity zones are found whenever a sidewalk is wide enough to allow a 4-6’ clear path and still have space for extra features. With sidewalks of 12’ or more, there is plenty of space to add interesting and useful details.
Some of the covered sidewalks are simple metal fixtures, and others have been upgraded with wooden beams, decorative elements, canvas awnings, and hanging plants to make a richer and more detailed pedestrian experience.
Instead of leaving sidewalks blank, these spaces can be filled with sandwich board signs, sidewalk merchandise sales, potted plants, trees, lighting, patio dining areas, bench seating, and more.
For now, these shaded storefronts under sidewalk canopies are a great place to start with outdoor seating and dining.
Filling the public space in the sidewalk with these items makes downtown Guymon feel more vibrant and alive. Ultimately, that makes downtown the heart of Guymon’s network of walkable places.
Create a wayfinding campaign starting from downtown. When people find their way to downtown, they find a lively pedestrian center. But there are many more destinations to explore in Guymon on foot. That makes downtown a great place for the hub of Guymon’s active transportation. A quick wayfinding system can be started with a small budget. The arrow signs shown here are simple yard signs with short messages about how long it will take to walk or bike to a destination. These signs can be placed on street corners to raise awareness. Many people are surprised how quick it is to get to popular destinations in the community without using a vehicle. Even simple chalk messages can serve as temporary wayfinding. In the long term, a wayfinding kiosk might be a good addition to a prominent corner like 5th and Main. The map on the kiosk can highlight destinations, walking and biking distances and times, and cultural district highlights.
A wayfinding kiosk in a prominent location can help people determine great destinations for walking, jogging, and biking.
Identify candidates for pilot street design projects.
Proposed Neighborhood Greenway
East
James
Main
An ideal street is a residential street that already has mature trees providing shade, and that connects multiple destinations people may want to walk to, like housing, parks, and schools. In this example, James Street is selected because it is precisely halfway between Main and Sunset, and it connects 3-4 schools.
12th Sunset
In addition to adding infrastructure on streets like Main and Sunset, some neighborhood streets can become ‘neighborhood greenways’ that are preferred places for walking. By carefully selecting a street, adding some traffic calming features to slow down cars, and enhancing some crosswalks, Guymon can create alternatives to busy streets that are comfortable for all ages and abilities.
Leila
Guymon’s recent comprehensive plan identifies streets where there is a priority to add bicycle or pedestrian infrastructure.
5th
Comp Plan Bike/Ped Streets
Schools
Parks
These images from the NACTO Global Street Design Guide (see resources) are traffic calming and pedestrian safety tools that can be employed together along a street and added over time. They can be tested with temporary materials.
Mini Circles are installed in the middle of an intersection to slow down cars passing through. They function like a small roundabout.
Neighborhood Gateways are a combination of a raised crosswalk and curb bulbouts at the entry to a lowspeed street, forcing slower speeds.
Pinch points narrow the street in the middle of a block, forcing drivers to slow down and possibly yield to oncoming traffic. They also create a narrow place for people to cross.
Curb Bulbouts or Curb Extensions narrow the crossing distance at an intersection for safer crossings.
Tighter Corners force cars to slow down if they are taking a turn.
Refuge Islands on extra wide streets are like medians that let people cross in two stages.
Interim Street Design
Interim Street Design is a test of a street feature that might last a few hours or a few months. During this exercise, a handful of volunteers used cones and duct tape to create a temporary curb extension on an extra wide street near Guymon High School. The street is 50’ wide from curb to curb, but only two travel lanes. By reserving the middle 20’ for two travel lanes, 15’ on each side of the street can be repurposed for other uses. At this intersection, a curb extension would shorten the crossing distance for the crosswalk, slow down traffic, and provide an organized space for on-street parking.
At this location, a curb extension could reduce a pedestrian’s crossing distance by 2/3 and make vehicles behave more predictably.
James 19th
Interim Street Design is effective when designed as a series. Treating a few intersections on the same street would be a great experiment. Here’s an example of curb extensions on a series of crosswalks leading to the high school. Almost any street feature can be tested temporarily using materials designed to last a few hours or a few months. More details are in the Tactical Urbanism Materials Guide (see Resources). Images below show corner tightening with traffic cones, a traffic mini-circle with erosion control bags and chalk, a sidewalk with parking curb blocks, curb extensions with polka-dot paint, curb extension with tan paint, and a plaza with boulders and planters.
Interim Street Design Installation
Painting bold zebra-stripe crosswalk.
Outlining curb extension with white paint.
Painting decorative pattern in curb extension.
Installing flexible plastic posts for visibility and safety.
Completed intersection. Photos by the Austin, Texas Department of Transportation.
Prototype 1: Intersection with Curb Extensions
At NW 21st and James, the asphalt on both streets is 50’ wide. The configuration creates long crossing distances for pedestrians. In this example, curb extensions are painted and marked with flexible plastic posts to narrow the crosswalks at the intersection to about 20-24 feet in width. The physical narrowing enforces good driver behavior. The crosswalks are repainted with a bold zebra-stripe pattern. New signage attached to the stop sign indicates that James Street is a designated neighborhood greenway. On-street parking can remain along the side of the street outside the intersection.
Prototype 2: Mid-Block Crossings
At some streets, like this stretch of James between 19th and 21st, the distance between marked places to cross the street is very far. In this example, mid-block crosswalks provide more opportunities to cross. These crossings also create pinch points that narrow the roadway to 20-24 feet to enforce slow speeds and cautious driving. On-street parking is still possible between crosswalks. A row of street trees is also added in this example. Street trees along the side of the road are another feature with a traffic calming effect.
Prototype 3: Mini-Circle
A mini-circle can be placed in the middle of wide intersections to slow down traffic and create a place for landscaping. Mini-circles can also be installed on a temporary basis using paint and planters with reflective tape. Depending on the width of the intersection, mini-circles can also be combined with curb extensions and zebra-stripe crosswalks.
Next Steps Guymon leaders and volunteers should start with a few sample projects in a small area. The team recommends clustering a few sample traffic-calming and pedestrian improvements along James Street, especially near the school.
1. Identify a Team (A Few Weeks)
The steps at the right show how a team of stakeholders can be assembled as volunteers to carry out and evaluate test improvements.
As a first step, the team should gather to quickly test different configurations and dimensions of possible improvements. Each meeting might focus on one or two locations for possible improvements. Use chalk, tape, and cones to outline possibilities and compare one or more alternatives. Volunteers should also test driving, walking, and biking through the quick-tests to confirm that they work for all users. Take note of the most preferred options.
Besides street improvements, signage improvements are also a low-hanging fruit for the City of Guymon to pursue. Create directional signs pointing to key destinations or highlighting preferred bicycle and pedestrian routes.
The team should include city staff, health department staff, and members of the local bike and pedestrian advocacy group. The group may also be able to find willing partnerships to include high school teachers and students as volunteers. 2. Quick-Tests (A Couple of Two-Hour Meetings)
3. Pilot Projects (One Day Installation, 3-Month Observation Period) The team leaders should gather supplies and materials for the temporary installation. These might include paint, boulders, reflective tape, flexible plastic posts, or heavy planter boxes. See the Tactical Urbanist’s Guide to Materials and Design in the Resources section for guidance. When the materials are gathered, spend a day installing the pilot projects. Take a 3-month period to observe and get feedback from people who use the street. 4. Next Steps (6 Months and Beyond) Once the team has a good idea of how the designs worked, determine if they should be adjusted or removed. If it works well or needs minor adjustments, start considering options for longer-term construction.
Collaborators & Participants Texas County Health Department
Community Members
Kayla McCarter, TSET Healthy Living Program Trudy Lackey, TSET Healthy Living Program
Amada Alvidrez, City Bank & Trust Company Jada Breeden, Guymon Chamber of Commerce April Coble, Guymon Daily Herald Patrick Coble, Guymon High School Juliann Graham, Guymon Main Street Monica Ronne, Guymon Main Street Ashlee Ortiz, Guymon Community Theater Josh Setzer, Guymon Community Theater Lisa Taylor, Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust Sarah Wagner, PCHC of Guymon
City of Guymon Kim L. Peterson, Mayor Sergio Alvidrez, Councilman Larry Mitchell, Interim City Manager Gary Brankle David Clapsaddle Miranda Gilbert Elvia Hernandez Institute for Building Technology and Safety David Harris Matt Nahrstedt Doug Moore Mitch Wagner OU Institute for Quality Communities Shane Hampton, Director Hope Mander, Associate Director Ron Frantz, Director of Small Towns Studios
Resources
TACTICAL URBANIST’S GUIDE TO MATERIALS AND DESIGN Version 1.0 DECEMBER 2016 | Created by The Street Plans Collaborative, with funding from The John s. and James L. Knight Foundation
The Global Street Design Guide contains design ideas all types of streets in cities and towns of all sizes. The guide is available for free as a PDF download or online resource at globaldesigningcities.org.
The Tactical Urbanist’s Guide to Materials and Design contains advice on materials and designs that are best for short-term experiments in street design. The guide is available for free at tacticalurbanismguide.com.
The Placemaking Conference is a biennial event hosted by the University of Oklahoma Institute for Quality Communities. Videos of expert lectures on walkability and public health are available at iqc.ou.edu/ conference.
Report prepared by: OU Institute for Quality Communities OU College of Architecture 830 Van Vleet Oval Gould Hall 165 Norman, OK 73019