ESSEX - Last summer the town received a $435,000 grant from the state-funded Main Street Investment Fund (MSIF) to help finance creation of a "shared street for the arts" in Ivoryton Center. This week the committee overseeing the grant is interviewing four engineering and design firms. The one selected will help the committee better determine its design goals and then turn those goals into engineering plans.

MSIF grants are provided to municipalities seeking to enhance and rejuvenate their Main Streets. The program provides funding to develop or improve town commercial districts, attract small businesses, and improve pedestrian access and livability in town centers.

"Main Street Investment grants play an important role in strengthening economic development initiatives on the local level," Governor Dannel Malloy said last July when making the grant announcement.

First Selectman Norman Needleman said the state grant will help "in the continued renewal of Ivoryton as a robust economic center."

Town Planner John Guszkowski said the present concept for Ivoryton Village focuses on the intersection of Summit and Main streets "as well as a little way up Summit and a little way down Main." He explained that what the committee had at this point "is something that we believe can be done, but it is only a concept."

Now, he added, the committee has to work toward defining and refining designs and plans.

Last month the town posted a request for proposals from engineering and design firms. It had four responses. The Board of Finance has approved $15,000 for this initial project phase. The $435,000 from the MSIF grant can be used only for implementation, not design work.

The plans call for a restructuring and enhancement of the Ivoryton center, making it pedestrian friendly and "giving it a more defined and distinct sense of place," acknowledging the theater, library, shops, restaurants, architecture, and history of the center.

"The center's infrastructure is lagging behind," Guszkowski said.

The place to start is the Summit-Main Street intersection and the removal of the present traffic island. This will allow for the reconfiguration of the intersection, the addition of new curbing and new crosswalks, "making the center safer and more accessible to pedestrians," and creating decorative sidewalks.

There is a thought or two as well to incorporating some treatment on the road pavement itself, "but this is a little up in the air," Guszkowski said. And at the new crosswalks at Main and Summit, perhaps something more distinct there than just white lines-brick, stamped concrete, painted piano keys.

With the island removed and a new intersection created, there is room for a seal of some design-an elephant created through stamped concrete?-to be located at grade in the road.

"It should be something that establishes Ivoryton, an icon, and sets that sense of place," Guszkowski explained.

If the idea carries through the design and engineering phases about to begin, then the Ivoryton Village Alliance is expected to call for a design competition.

The firm selected from the interviews "will help the committee pull all these ideas together," the planner said. "The idea is to reflect and celebrate that great things have happened, and are happening today, in Ivoryton."