A community effort to put Chico’s Downtown Revitalization Project back on the city council agenda is gaining steam.
The Save Downtown Chico website wants people to call their council members, attend meetings and show their support for the project — all in the hope that it can still get approved.
The proposal would have redesigned downtown’s streets to be more walkable and bikeable, but a tie vote April 21 effectively sank it.
That’s drawing sharp criticism.
Councilmember Addison Winslow, who voted in favor of the project, says part of his frustration centers on a looming June deadline to secure state grant funding for the roughly $40–$50 million effort. He says not moving forward is a big loss.
“The community didn't fail. The leadership failed,” Winslow said. “They have every opportunity to know everything they need to know to make a decision on this project, and the idea of deferring it further like we're not sure we need to come up with different alternatives is ludicrous.”
Councilmember Bryce Goldstein, who also voted in favor, echoed Winslow’s sentiment, saying she was disappointed in the council’s lack of a decision.
“I can tell that people are feeling disheartened that all this work has been going into the project for over two years,” Goldstein said, “and now there's no clear direction, and there's this feeling of like, is the project dead?”
NSPR reached out to council members who voted against the proposal but did not receive comment by deadline.
At the meeting, council members who voted against the proposal voiced several concerns, including feeling like they needed to know more details about the project’s overall timeline, cost and impacts before they could confidently move forward.
But many were shaped by information raised during the meeting.
While public comment leaned heavily in favor of the project, Enloe Health warned about potential emergency access delays due to fewer traffic lanes in the redesign. And there was ongoing pushback from a group of downtown business owners who said fewer lanes could impede truck deliveries. Many business owners also said they wouldn’t survive construction.
Where the project goes from here is unclear. No re-vote is currently scheduled.
