Please! Not a strip club!

City Council will be briefed next week on the reconstruction of Huron Street, scheduled to begin later this year and to be finished in 2016.

Among other things, city planners will be talking about their search for ideas for some kind of sign or outdoor landmark to welcome visitors pulling onto Huron after clearing Canada Customs at the International Bridge.

The feature is expected to be located in a small green space in front of a PUC substation at the corner of Huron and Queen.

Speaking Thursday night to a meeting of the Sault's cultural advisory board, Steve Turco from the city planning department revealed one early concept (shown), based on the famous 32-foot-high LAX letters, surrounded by illuminated vertical tubes, that greet visitors to Los Angeles International Airport.

The proposed Sault location used to be maintained by the city's public works department but has recently fallen into what Turco described as "a bit of a state of disarray."

All that will change as the city works to convert Huron Street into a pleasing streetscape that will remind visitors that they have arrived somewhere special.

"We don't know what that welcoming feature is going to be, whether it's going to be a fountain or a series of other interesting landscape amenities," Turco said.

City Planning Director Don McConnelll said that city council will be asked on Monday to pay for the streetscape improvements from $1.25 million in Fednor and Northern Ontario Heritage Fund monies earmarked for downtown improvements.

Council will also be asked to fund improvements on a part of Queen Street that recently lost its ash trees from the same source.

Part of that money was originally earmarked for improving Gore Street, but McConnell said that a recent inspection of conditions beneath that neighbourhood showed underground services to be in very poor condition.

"Gore Street will not be done this year," McDonnell said.

The city's engineering department is "probably going to be coming back with a recommendation for a total rebuild on Gore Street next year," he told the culture board last night.

The board is expected to host an open house seeking ideas for the landmark gateway feature, which is expected to cost about $40,000.

"It's not public art," McConnell said. "The province and the feds won't pay municipalities to commission public art work. But they will pay for interesting features.... Whatever this is has the potential to create a kind of Welcome To Canada image."

McConnell has also briefed officials of Tourism Sault Ste. Marie on the project.

He said city tourism officials are very excited about the initiative but had few ideas for it, except that they didn't want U.S. visitors to be greeted by a strip club.

Chris Rous, a member of the cultural advisory board, said that the new feature would need to be dramatic and would probably involve illumination and movement.

Huron Street will be rebuilt in 2015 and 2016 from Queen to just past Cathcart Street.

Steve Turco said it will most likely be reduced to three lanes from the current four.

Turco wasn't sure whether the design will include bike lanes but he said the Hub Trail will be rerouted to go down the east side of Huron Street.

An environmental assessment is currently underway on the reduction of Huron Street from four lanes to three, McConnell said.

"I suspect that when they rebuild this, it will be three lanes instead of four," he said.

Ward 2 Councillor Terry Sheehan suggested last night that the culture board do a "drive-by" of the Huron Street site so members would be familiar with it.

This prompted a swift, cheeky response from Chris Rous: "If you were in L.A., and you said a drive-by, that would not be good....you've got to know that!"