What happens to Main Avenue if Durango City Council does nothing? For two years, the arguments over Downtown's Next Step have treated that as the safe answer, with Main left as it is. The city's own engineers have described something different, and the gap between those two versions is where downtown's future now sits.
The redesign of Main from Fifth Street to 14th Street is finished on paper. The engineering firm MIG completed the 100% plans and cost estimates in August 2026, and the city presented them to council at an Oct. 6 study session. According to the Durango Herald's Oct. 13 report, council asked plenty of questions and gave no direction. As of mid-October, the plan has no funding, no construction schedule and no grant applications in progress.
The part of the plan that isn't optional
Under the wider sidewalks and bump-outs, the plan is a utility project. City staff described the utility scope at an Aug. 27, 2024 forum with the Business Improvement District, the Chamber and Local First. It calls for a complete waterline replacement, new individual water service lines for buildings that now share one, and a complete sewer main replacement, with building sewer services replaced where necessary. Gas and electric are not included.
Someone at that forum asked what happens to those needs if the project never moves forward. The city answered on the Engage Durango forum Q&A page:
"The existing infrastructure has exceeded its useful life and will need to be replaced sooner rather than later. This will happen in the future whether this project occurs or not. This would still involve cutting into the street and reconstruction of the street with significant impacts to downtown."
The same answer warns that "emergency reactionary repairs will continue to occur" in the meantime. In another response, staff said emergency outages cost more and disrupt the corridor more than planned upgrades do. So the choice in front of council is not really whether Main gets torn up. It is whether the street goes back together the way it looks now or the way the 236-page plan set draws it.
Two price tags for the same trench
At the Oct. 6 study session, Oswald and Tyler presented two engineer's estimates prepared by MIG, both in 2026 dollars.
| Utility only | Utility plus streetscape | |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 estimate | $7,338,944.10 | $18,199,144.56 |
| What it covers | Water and sewer work, plus the sidewalk removal, curb ramps and pavement markings that come with it | Everything in the utility estimate, plus landscaping, accessibility work, drainage, electrical, lighting, street furnishings, trees, bioretention, seating and transit improvements |
The utility-only estimate comes to about 40% of the full one. The difference, roughly $10.9 million, is the real cost of the redesign people argue about. Evan Tyler, the city's capital improvements project manager, told council that the utility-only path carries extra "dependencies" that would need to be handled before construction, "on the order of $200,000, $100,000." He also said the two halves were never meant to be separated. The city priced them separately because residents asked what each piece would cost on its own.
Tyler also told council that both numbers "should be taken with a grain of salt." "These prices may not be exactly reflective of what it's going to be if we wait a year or two years or three years to build this project," he said, as the Herald reported.
Why "no direction" is still a decision
The Herald summed up the procedural problem in one line: "In the case of Downtown's Next Step, no action is action."
Here is how it works. On Sept. 17, 2024, council passed a resolution directing staff to finish the design and run a pilot project, while suspending any spending or planning toward construction. Staff have done both. Without new direction, the city's presentation says, staff will not plan construction or seek funding assistance. Multimodal manager Lily Oswald told the Herald in August that the project "is not reflected in any capital improvement five-year calendar."
That puts a clock on the finished plan. At the study session, Oswald said that if council does direct staff to continue, sooner is better. Grants are easier to win with current cost estimates, and material costs will likely rise. The pipes are on a separate track. A note in the Oct. 6 presentation says the city and community always meant the utility improvements to stand alone, which is why the 2024 resolution left them out, and that Public Works "will continue to prioritize utility upgrades and identify funding." Until that work happens, the forum Q&A says, emergency repairs will keep happening.
Councilors asked whether there was a middle path: picking parts of the plan, changing it block by block once work begins, or landing somewhere between $7.3 million and $18.2 million. Tyler said changes aren't "out of the question" but warned that "you realize that small thing you changed snowballed into a very big thing." Oswald said picking and choosing would mean a scope change and a redesign. Councilor Jessika Loyer described council's role this way: "I think it's our job to find this: what's priority for our community, what's budget priority, what can we afford."
What the curb extensions on College, 7th and 8th were for
If you have walked Main during the past two summers, you have seen pieces of the plan already. The pilot placed temporary curb extensions at the College Drive, 7th Street and 8th Street intersections and added two pedlets. The city describes the pedlets as extra sidewalk space for businesses and pedestrians. The curb extensions were meant to:
- Shorten pedestrian crossings
- Make people stepping off the curb easier for drivers to see
- Slow traffic
- Let the city watch how delivery trucks and other large vehicles handle the tighter turns
The turning question came first. Before the pilot went in, staff ran a cone-based test at 7th and College, and snowplows and recycling trucks made it through. That result was shared at the August 2024 forum. The city reinstalled the pilot pieces for summer 2026. In 2025 they came out for winter during the first week of November.
Parking is one figure the full design doesn't take away. Oswald told the Herald there are currently 146 on-street spaces along Main between Fifth and 14th, and the full plan has 154.
Where downtown business owners land
The disagreement downtown is narrower than it can sound. People are not arguing about the pipes. They are arguing about what goes on top of them.
Claire Carver, owner and operator of Carver Brewing Co., told the Herald that the brewery's bump-out lets it serve up to 40 people per hour outside. She called the front porch "one of our most requested areas." Her case for the full plan rests on the utility work: if Main Avenue is going to "get ripped up one way or another to replace the aging utilities," she asked, why not make the most of it?
Jack Turner, who owns property along Main, told the same paper he prefers the partial option. "I think that everyone is in favor of infrastructure repairs, whether it's utilities or asphalt replacement, sidewalk fixing – all those things. Nobody's opposed," he said. Turner and several other downtown businesses sent council a report raising concerns about which businesses would get bump-outs, safety, disruption to delivery zones and financial risk to owners.
Both of them start from the same premise as the city's Q&A: the street is coming up. The Business Improvement District board went through the 90% plans block by block in early August, covering parking, sidewalk maintenance and bump-outs. Earlier, at the October 2025 community meeting, the city asked residents for feedback on materials, colors and furniture.
What construction would look like if council says go
Tyler gave council a rough outline. Work would be phased over about four years, most likely in block sections, so all of Main would not be under construction at once. Councilor Shirley Gonzales raised concerns about that timeline. Tyler called it a tough balance between enjoying the city and needing working utilities. "We are in a tough situation of darned if you do, darn if you don't," he said.
At the 2024 forum, the city said it would set up a construction email list for businesses, name a single point of contact in the capital improvements division, and send mailers and door hangers before and during work, with help from the BID in getting the word out. Carver told the Herald she hopes the city errs toward over-communicating, whether work goes block by block or half a block at a time.
The 1000 block already chose the full rebuild
On the north end of Main, one building has already faced the same decision on a smaller scale. Sean Dugan bought the former Olde Tymer's Cafe building at 1000 Main Ave. in 2024, planning to renovate it and lease it out. As the Herald reported Oct. 4, once he saw the structural problems, he decided the interior and infrastructure needed a complete overhaul, and that pushed the timeline back. "It became abundantly clear that it really needed to get a full face-lift, and so it took time," he said.
Dugan expects the work to be done by the end of the year, with a new restaurant moving in. It will not be a reopening of Olde Tymer's, though he hinted at a possible homage, and he will hold partial ownership. FCI Constructors, Inc. and SEH, Inc. are handling the remodel.
Main Avenue's pipes are on the same kind of path. City staff have called them past their useful life, and Public Works plans to replace them with or without the redesign. The full plan is drawn and priced. The decision still waiting on council is whether the sidewalks, trees and lighting get rebuilt while the street is already open.
If you own a home or commercial property near Main and want to talk about what a multi-year construction window, or a finished streetscape, could mean for you, Judi Mora has followed downtown Durango through more than 20 years of change and is happy to walk through it with you. Request a Free Home Valuation, and we can start with where your property stands today.
