By Brian Shane

Staff Writer

Snow Hill says its plan to reinvigorate a downtown boulevard with a streetscape project is shovel-ready and awaiting a groundbreaking date before the year is out.

Featuring pavers, trees, benches, historical markers, and even an area for a stage, a reconfigured and meandering Bank Street promenade will connect Green Street in the downtown with the Pocomoke River.

All that’s left now is to hire a firm to manage the project, await a final funding push, and get to work, according to Paul Bessette, Snow Hill’s grants administrator. The hope is for a completed project by spring 2026.

Most of the project’s estimated $1 million cost has been fully funded or pledged, according to Bessette. Worcester County officials helped last year by donating about 9,000 square feet of property along Bank Street for the project. All that’s left is to bury the utility lines for aesthetics. The town applied for a $300,000 award to handle that from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development. They already secured an earlier $150,000 award from DHCD toward the project.

Making this spot a permanent gathering space took root during the COVID-19 pandemic, when picnic tables were left at the intersection of Bank Street and Green Street so people could safely take their socially distanced lunch outdoors.

“It was blocked off with big planters and it was just a nice place where, with the restrictions people could, gather and communicate on a human level – you know, everybody knows what we were facing” with the pandemic, Bessette said.

From there, the seed was planted: some in the community wanted to keep that camaraderie going and build up a kind of transitional area from the downtown to the riverfront.

A Main Street-type of organization called Downtown Snow Hill picked up the torch and pushed the project forward with robust community support. Their motto: a place you to travel to, not through.

When it’s done, the Bank Street promenade will be multi-use: it’ll serve as a two-lane road most of the time, but it can be blocked off for artistic and social events, like Snow Hill’s First Friday, paddle boat races, or the annual Blessing of the Combines.

There also will be different kiosks and installations offering Snow Hill facts and historical tidbits, Bessette said: about the African American community, about the former industry that was here, how Snow Hill as a port city was a huge player on the Eastern Shore in colonial times, and more.

Bessette said a quick glance at the space now between downtown and the river feels more blighted than beautified. But when some vacant spaces get filled, like the town’s historic firehouse and an adjacent restaurant, there’s hope for a renaissance here.

“It’s never going to be industrial – we’re not going to build ships, there’s not going to be any more chicken plants on the river, or anything like that,” he said. “What’s going to be on the river is people, and social activities, and I think it’s a great connection. It’s just sort of symbiotic.”

Snow Hill’s Town Manager Rick Pollitt said the project already was underway when he got hired here in 2021. He said the idea was to funnel tourists down to the Pocomoke River, where a tourist destination, a paddleboat called the Black-Eyed Susan was docked.

But after a year, that boat project failed badly, mostly due to regulatory issues and prohibitive six-figure repair costs. It left Snow Hill reeling with a black eye of its own, tourism-wise.

Pollitt used to be the Wicomico County Executive at a time when the City of Salisbury had its own pedestrian promenade, a former two-way street near the Wicomico River that was closed to traffic to boost tourism and foot traffic.

He said the concept here – a connection between the business district and the river – is strikingly similar. He’s hopeful it’ll spark an economic boost.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an energetic and cohesive community spirit out of a downtown organization as I have here,” Pollitt said. “These folks really have their act together. It’s truly the concept of the rising tide, you know? It’s not survival of the fittest. It really is a community spirit hard at work downtown Snow Hill, and I am just so happy to see that.”