It looks like the last bare patch of land making up the downtown area will finally be developed thanks to a recent vote by the Town Council to approve Phase II and Phase III of the Park Place project.

To be clear, and as we’ve stated in the past, we’re not advocating for “develop everything!” Some open spaces in a community should absolutely be preserved, but we’d argue the heart of downtown is one of the places you want to add some additional residential and retail space, especially if what’s there currently is just a swath of dirt and rocks.

And that’s exactly what the final phases of Park Place will do. As you’ll see in our 1A reporting in this week’s paper, these final phases of the project will add hundreds of new apartments and thousands of feet of new retail space.

It was a long road full of disagreements and compromises to get to this point, but it all went toward making sure the final piece of the puzzle was the right fit. Obviously, there was no perfect solution that would make everyone happy, but we feel pretty confident about what the Town Council and developer have agreed upon.

With any luck we’ll have shovels in the ground later this year and, before you know it, Avenue of the Fountains will finally feel complete.