Plans for Edinburgh’s downtown plaza are moving forward.
The Edinburgh Town Council seems inclined to hire RVi Planning as lead designer for the downtown Edinburgh plaza project, after proposals were presented at their Monday meeting.
Two proposals were presented to the board during their meeting, one from RVi and one from HWC Engineering. Council member Sherri Sweet said she liked the detail RVi presented in their proposal.
“We really felt like we might be getting more bang for our buck through RVi Planning and Landscape Architecture,” Daniel Teter, parks & recreation superintendent, said at the meeting. “HWC, we think we’ll end up with a good product, we just feel like if you look through the different elements, design, placemaking, deliverables and so on, that RVi is just going to give us a little more. We think we probably could have gotten more out of HWC, but we pay them more to get it.”
The approved contract will now go to town attorney Dustin Huddleston for review. The town council will likely vote to officially hire RVi at their next meeting on May 11, said Sarabeth Drybread, town economic development director.
“Both are great to work with and we have worked with HWC in the past on several projects,” Drybread said. “I think for this one, it was really wanting to get a detailed design in a way that is going to allow us to do this plaza in phases, and there are features that we don’t know budget-wise if we’ll be able to implement early on.”
The downtown Edinburgh plaza project, to be located at 201 W. Main Cross St., aims to revitalize downtown by attracting people to the area, which will bring foot traffic and support for downtown businesses. It also aims to enhance the quality of life by providing entertainment and lifestyle opportunities for all ages in the community, Drybread said.
“And this area is perfect because it’s adjacent to downtown, it’s the cornerstone of our downtown, and it’s right next to the library,” Drybread said. “So we really want to have a good partnership with our downtown businesses, our library, which is really doing some great programming right now, and we want it to be that central community hub for entertainment, for [farmers] markets.”
The plaza will feature an amphitheater for summer concerts, movies and other live performances. The plaza will also host farmers markets, artisan events, craft fairs and similar events.
Other hopes to add early on in the buildout are a splash pad and a space for public art installations. The plaza will also utilize and repurpose saved stones from the Blue River Dam, which was demolished in 2024, for its aesthetics and seating, she said.
“It is still just a blank canvas right now, which is a great place to be. It’ll allow RVi to work with our community on really making an adaptable plaza to meet the community needs,” Drybread said. “So that was one of the things we liked about this firm, was we really don’t want to overdesign it; we want it to be adaptable.”
RVi’s initial bid was around $89,000, but it was scaled back to around $38,000. The downtown plaza project will be paid for using grants they’ve received through community partnerships, including the Community Foundation of Johnson County, Festival Country Indiana, the town’s redevelopment commission and from the realty association MIBOR, Drybread said.
“This plaza is also part of our READI 2.0 application, and so the state will be allocating dollars towards this as well,” Drybread said.
From here, Drybread said they’ll start the design and technical details, such as topographical surveys and utility location, in addition to doing some site visits with RVi and surveys. RVi will develop different schematic designs, which will be tweaked based on needs, and the bid process will begin.
Timeline-wise, she hopes the plaza will be open by the spring of 2027.
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