AUBURN — Plans to replace the cracked and peeling New Auburn Main Street mural could be ready to move forward as part of an overall sidewalk improvement program.

Councilors reviewed plans to fix up the Main Street area from Academy Street south to the New Auburn bridge over the Little Androscoggin. The 770-foot-long mural is along the east side of the street between Newbury Street south to Laurel Avenue.

“We are going to work on the sidewalk and the drainage for Main Street anyway,” City Manager Glenn Aho said. “By including the art project as part of it, we can use Community Development Block Grant funds for some of the work as well.”

Community Development Administrator Reine Mynahan said the City Council set aside $389,000 in capital improvement bonds for the work last year. That money, combined with $200,000 in block grant funds for the 2010-11 fiscal year, should pay for the bulk of the work.

Plans call for replacing the paint-on-cement mural with landscaping and nine 24-foot-long aluminum signs covered with vinyl art. The art would be designed by Edward Little High School art students in a program led by art teacher Shawn Rice.

Rice said students would develop their artwork based on Auburn’s history. The finished works would include painting, sculpture, photography and other disciplines, all adapted to fit on the aluminum signs.

The art project itself amounts to $28,000 of the overall budget, Mynahan said

But Councilor Mike Farrell said the new plan was too similar to one presented to councilors last year. Farrell said he objected because the work was too expensive.

“We’ve already seen this, and voted against it,” he said. “Is the idea to keep presenting the same idea until we finally pass it?” 

But City Manager Glenn Aho said the current plan was very different. 

“We feel this is the project we can do for the money we have,” Aho said. Councilor Ray Berube agreed, saying the current plan and the previous plan are as different as apples and oranges. The previous plan would have used an out-of-state consultant to help create fabric panels that would have been hung along the wall.

The current mural was designed in 2001 when local artist Natasha Mayers worked with area schoolchildren to design scenes for individual sections of the wall. Some depict balloons from the Great Falls Balloon Festival, while others show shoes being made. Another depicts a scene from the Great Auburn Fire of 1933.

Community Services Director Eric Labelle said the art was only one part. The sidewalk and street work would be designed to make the stretch more pedestrian and bicycle friendly and bring changes made to the northern section of Main Street last year into New Auburn.

“There’s a real need to do something in this area,” Labelle said. “We want to look at traffic turning into local businesses and what that does, and how people trying to walk in this area manage.”

The city renovated the northern end of Main Street, from Academy Street north, in 2008. The work involved replacing the Mechanics Row intersection with a roundabout and making the northern end of the street one-way to Court Street. Crews also narrowed the street between Elm and Drummond streets, planted a grassy esplanade along the sides,and installed new street lights south along the street.

Councilor Dan Herrick said he objected to one part of the plan, to narrow Main Street to one lane in either direction.

“We need to do something down there serious, because that area needs help,” Herrick said. “I don’t see how narrowing it does that.”

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