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The Bemidji City Council held a work session Tuesday to consider final landscaping layouts for Hannah Avenue, Middle School Drive, and Highway 197.
As design work continues on Bemidji’s Hannah Avenue and Middle School Drive reconstruction project, which is scheduled for 2026, what the final landscaping along those roads will be is up for discussion. City staff have met internally with the Parks Department, Streets Department, and Engineering to create a starting point for what the finished corridor could look like.
“What we were doing tonight was looking at the initial landscaping plan for the proposed renovations to Paul Bunyan Drive and to Hannah Avenue and to Middle School Drive,” explained Bemidji Mayor Jorge Prince. “And I think as many people know, that’s all being considered right now for roundabouts and different things that are happening. But this was more about the landscaping. How is it going to look when you come into Bemidji?”
While the meeting was more about the landscaping and the maintenance behind it, once council members saw the addition of several roundabouts to the proposed roads, the reconstruction designs quickly became the main topic of discussion.
“[The Minnesota Department of Transportation] only proposing three. That’s at the intersection where Menards is, that’s at a signal now, and then Middle School [Road], which is where Walmart is, and then Hannah Avenue, which is where Simonson’s gas station is,” said Sam Anderson, Bemidji City Engineer. “The city has determined that there is some advantage to adding some roundabouts on our local legs to help deal with some congestion that we’re seeing at some of those p.m. peaks or the afternoon peaks when school lets out. We are looking to install some of those as part of our street project. So there’s a total of six now, but three were the MnDOT projects and then the city is looking to add three of our own.”
The council agreed that roundabouts help with the overall flow of traffic, but some members were concerned that maybe these plans added too much and that the overall upkeep would be tough to manage.
“There’s been some concern, as I have heard over the years of the ones that have been installed, there’s maybe been some issues with maybe what was chosen to go in the centers of them,” stated Anderson. “So I understand that not everybody that builds them necessarily has the ability to enhance them, so to speak, and refresh them up. But I do think we’re in a position where as a community, we want to see a little bit better as this is the entrance to our city on the west end of town.”
He continued, “And so I am going to be coming back to council with some renderings to give, maybe a little bit more of a 3D look of what these could look like. But the goal, I think, and there seem to be some concerns tonight from the council that we want to see a little bit more than what we’ve seen in some of the other existing ones. This is higher traffic, this is our commercial district. We definitely want to put our best foot forward of something that we can actually maintain as well, so there’s a balance. So that’s the goal.”
Municipal consent will not happen until November this year. Until then, the council will keep discussing design plans at future work sessions.