By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — A Providence consulting firm in charge of reconfiguring the Truman Bypass in order to make the Blackstone River more accessible is looking for a few good ideas — from you.

The firm, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, recently signed an $86,000 contract with the city to develop a plan to make the waterfront a more central part of downtown life. As a first step, the firm will host a gathering in Harris Hall on June 24 at 7 p.m. to gather feedback from business owners, neighbors and other stakeholders, said City Planner Catherine Bell.
“The overarching goal is to increase heritage tourism and economic development opportunities using our two great resources — the Blackstone River and Historic Main Street,” said Bell.
The effort to create the “wayfinding” plan grew out of a 2005 brainstorming session in which dozens of residents, landscape architects and urban planners spent a day at City Hall attempting to identify ways of making the waterfront more accessible from downtown, and vice versa. Perhaps the chief consensus that emerged from the session was that the Truman Bypass was a major impediment.
The problem affects not merely downtown pedestrians who find the waterfront difficult to reach, said Bell. The Bypass also tends to discourage residents of new riverfront condos such as the Allen Street Lofts from exploring Main Street or doing business with its merchants. As the crow flies, it's just a short walk to Main Street, but residents tend to run  errands elsewhere because the neighborhood is so difficult to navigate on foot —thanks largely to the bypass.
“It's a barrier,” says Bell. “There's a lack of continuity between Main Street and the riverfront that's both physical and psychological. It feels hostile down there when you're a pedestrian.”
Originally conceived as a route for motor vehicle traffic to do an end run around a once-bustling shopping district and make commercial loading docks more easily accessible for trucks, the Truman Bypass has been a fixture in the city for decades. During the 2005 brainstorming session at City Hall, participants conceived of myriad ways of modernizing or eliminating the loop, including converting it into a park or spanning it with a pedestrian bridge.
Bell says it's too soon to predict how the consultants will address the issue, but the firm is serious about incorporating ideas from city residents into their plan. Bell points out that it's already evident that the Bypass will be modified somewhat by 2012, when the state Department of Transportation plans to use a portion for bicycles as part of a new segment of the Blackstone River Bikeway.
The wayfinding plan is a joint venture of the city and the Main Street Riverfront Initiative, a semi-private, non-profit arm of the city's Department of Economic Development, according to Linda Plays, program manager. Several grants, including $45,000 from the federal Preserve America Foundation, $40,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and $5,000 from MSRI are the sole sources of revenue to fund the project.
Formally, the project is known as “Connecting Our Heritage: A Wayfinding Master Plan for Downtown Woonsocket.” In addition to addressing problems with the Truman Bypass, the objectives include identifying new pedestrian routes to the riverfront from Main Street and developing strategies to stimulate foot traffic between the Museum of Work and Culture and the Stadium Theatre.
Located at opposite ends of the downtown area, the two institutions “are like anchors” that bookend the neighborhood, said Plays. The city wants to encourage the many visitors they draw to fan out, patronizing restaurants and other businesses that lie between them.