You noticed some serious concrete work underway in various locations along Main Street today.

Specifically –
• Three stamped concrete pads for downtown bike racks are being poured by Patriot Concrete.

• Two ADA ramps are being added at the Lake Street intersection along North Main Street by Jim’s Excavating, Ft. Jennings.

The Village Public Works Department excavated and prepared all sites for concrete.  

As Bluffton becomes a more friendly bicycle village, more incentives become available to encourage bike use here.

The downtown pads are a step in the creation of 17 bicycle parking spaces to be installed this fall along the Main Street business district.

The ADA ramps, paid for by the Bluffton pedestrian pathway board, will eventually include a cross walk to connect the Triplett bike path from the Buckeye area to Lake Street.

The downtown bike racks come as a result of a $5,000 grant from the Allen County Health Department’s "Creating Healthy Communities.” The concrete work is one of the steps in getting the bike racks in place.

Those 17 parking spaces are planned for:
• Town hall (3 spaces)
• Presbyterian alley (4)
• Edward Jones alley on North Main (5)
• Book ReViews alley (5)

 Signage will be placed in nearby businesses pointing customers to the bike racks.

Participating with the Allen County Healty Communities and Bluffton Lions Club Foundation in the bike rack project are Masterpiece Signs and Patriot Concrete. 

Examples of those informational signs are part of this story. The gray signs will be posted in business windows pointing to the bike racks. The sign with black lettering will be installed at the bike racks.