ABOVE: Engineers with Bolton & Menk, local business owners and representatives, residents, city staff members and city council members look over drawings of proposed plans for Blue Earth Avenue in Fairmont during a community engagement session Wednesday evening at the Southern Minnesota Educational Campus (SMEC) building in Fairmont.

FAIRMONT– A community engagement session on Wednesday evening provided the community the opportunity to ask questions and share their thoughts about Blue Earth Avenue in Fairmont. The heavily used street is slated to have a mill and overlay done next summer and the city is looking to incorporate some improvements during the process.

Recently, the Fairmont City Council has talked about the project on a few different occasions and has heard a presentation from a traffic engineer with Bolton & Menk regarding some statistics and options. The stretch of road starts east of the roundabout by the Fairmont Opera House and goes all the way down to Highway 15.

Of the Wednesday evening event, Public Works Director, Matthew York, said, “It’s to begin a community conversation regarding some of the design elements. We need to talk about intersections, cross sections, how the road will look and operate and also some aesthetic portions of it.”

He spoke more about why it’s important to gather community input.

“We need to allow people to have the opportunity to say what they would or wouldn’t like and get that information back to the council as we make the final design that matches available funds,” York said. “If we don’t ask the questions, then we’re just designing it how we want it.”

However, he stressed that while community input is important, the city also needs to consider engineering standards and also what kind of funds are available.

“You can’t just do whatever the residents want because they might not understand the design components and all the other requirements we have to meet for stormwater, pedestrian safety and ADA compliance,” York said.

He acknowledged that a community engagement session is not part of every project that the city does and explained why this one warranted it.

“This street is more visible- it’s not just a side street. It’s part of the central business district,” York said.

While not all improvements are necessary as part of the mill and overlay, York said they will for sure need to do something at at the Park and Prairie intersections because the stop lights are no longer warranted at those locations so state funding cannot be used.

“When you use state and federal funding, you have to bring everything up to current standards,” York explained.

New stop lights carry a cost of about $350,000 and cannot be covered by those funds so will have to be 100 percent covered by the city. However, a roundabout or two or four-way stop signs are a possible and cheaper option.

Engineers with Bolton & Menk were present Wednesday to answer some of the questions and Troy Nemmers went over four of the options currently on the table.

He prefaced the presentation by saying the streets will not become any wider as a result of the mill and overlay. The presentation included four different options and each carry pros and cons as well as different cost estimates.

One option is to convert the street from four lanes to three lanes. Another option is beautification with possible street lighting and planters and removing some parking lanes.

Option three involves the maximum amount of beautification with full length boulevards and mini roundabouts at Park and Prairie and option four is a combination of beautification with a mini roundabout at Prairie.

Both residents and business owners along the affected area were present Wednesday. During the engagement session on Wednesday evening, the owner of a business in the area advocated for a four-way stop sign on Prairie Avenue.

One resident had concerns with snow removal along Blue Earth Avenue with some of the proposed changes.

On Wednesday a draft of the project was available and a QR code was given out which leads to an online survey at clients.bolton-menk.com/fairmont2025blueearthave/

“People will be able to go into the website and click on different boxes and say, ‘I like the roundabout’ or ‘I don’t like the roundabout. It’s interactive so they can put n notes on their likes and dislikes,” York said.

It will be live after May 9. All of the survey results will then be available to the city council and the council is scheduled to talk about them at the June 23 meeting.