A few months ago, the City of Ripon began looking at rehabilitating a few streets along downtown.

Included were Second Street, Acacia Avenue, Stockton Avenue and the Highway 99 frontage road.

“Before we considered investing money, we wanted to make sure of the big picture,” City Administrator Kevin Werner said at Tuesday’s Ripon City Council informal information workshop.

Enter Scott Robertson, who is the GHD landscape architect from the Roseville office.

For past six months — off and on, he said of this process — GHD has been looking at the streets, working with the existing right of way to maximize its use.

GHD, a global transportation planning and traffic engineering consulting service, is no stranger to Ripon. According to Robertson, his firm did the improvements on the nearby clock tower roundabout along with the downtown beautification project consisting of the archways, planters and monuments.

Much of those ideas are incorporated in the Downtown Circulation Analysis / Streetscape Improvements project.

“This is the beginning of the process of laying out our downtown streets,” Werner said.

Robertson provided three different scenarios on improvements along First and Second streets coupled with Locust Avenue (south entrance), Walnut and Elm avenues, Garrison Way and the Main Street turn-around.

The latter is the area of the proposed multi-modal rail station also consisting of Industrial Avenue.

“We want to put up better lighting and landscape to make it more inviting (to downtown),” Robertson said.

Improving parking situation is big part of the plan. Downtown currently has 171 existing parking spaces with the plan adding 74 more spaces. “It doesn’t mean that you’re going to park in front of the business (that you’re going to),” Robertson said.

GHD is looking to enhance the city streets in this project by making them more pedestrian and bicycle friendly. This includes piano-key stripped pedestrian crosswalks and improved curb appeal with sustainable landscaping.

As for funding, the city has money in its reserve funds. Werner noted that Second Street, for example, might qualify for a Safe Routes to School grant.

“We could look at two to four priority projects and try to secure funds,” he added.