Building a glass pavilion and making other improvements to Cheapside Park will be the next phase of the downtown streetscape plan, consultant Clete Benken said Tuesday.

Work is scheduled to start in December on Cheapside Park and be completed by the first of April for the spring opening of the Lexington Farmers Market.

Beneken, a principal in the Covington architectural and urban planning firm Kinzelman, Kline Gossman, gave the Urban County Council a streetscape status report at council's weekly work session Tuesday.

Engineering and design documents for new sidewalks, rain gardens and other improvements on West Main Street, between Broadway and Limestone, will be finished in November. The work likely will be put out for bid in December, Benken said. Construction will start early next year. All work on Main Street will be funded by the city.

Similar improvements on Vine Street will be paid for with federal stimulus money. Consequently, Benken said, the state must approve the reconfiguration of the street to accommodate bike lanes. Vine Street work is expected to go out for bid in early 2010, with construction starting by February.

Both Main and Vine are being designed for bike lanes whether the streets remain one-way or are converted to two-way, Benken said.

Benken was asked whether improvements on Main and Vine will be as disruptive to downtown traffic and businesses as the current work on South Limestone has been.

"You have suffered the worst first," Benken said, referring to the South Limestone project.

The Kinzelman firm deals with "a lot of aging corridors where infrastructure has to be replaced," Benken told council members.

The work on South Limestone is "unique in that you, typically, don't have so much underground utility work to do." On Main and Vine, he said, underground work will be "relatively minor."