Downtown Brookhaven will soon get a facelift for its streets and parking.

The Brookhaven Board of Aldermen approved a proposal to reroute and repave the city’s downtown streets and add parking at its meeting Tuesday.

Ryan Holmes, an engineer with Dungan Engineering, presented the board with his analysis of the downtown parking area in a work session recently. He recapped his recommendation at the meeting, while asking for an approval.

“What we talked about was turning Whitworth and Railroad into one-way streets,” Holmes said. “Whitworth Avenue would run south and Railroad Avenue would run north. We would also change the two intersections on Cherokee Street to four-way stops instead of signals to address the traffic flow there.”

Holmes said the project would include repaving all of the downtown streets, restriping all of the streets and parking spaces to match the new pattern.

The project also includes paving Cherokee Street from downtown to Brookway Boulevard, Holmes said.

“Cherokee would start on the Boulevard and go all the way to South First Street,” Holmes said. “We’ve paved Church Street and Chickasaw Street. If we started Cherokee at the library, we’d be leaving a gap out there, so that is why in my estimate I included it all.”

The result of rerouting the downtown area would be 40 additional parking spots, Holmes said.

“The project will allow the merchants to have some much needed parking,” he said.

The rough, estimated cost for the downtown renovations is $303,000, Holmes said.

“We ran some costs on that to do it,” Holmes said. “That is still a high-level cost. We haven’t done any plans or specifications. We took that number based off of recent projects. Obviously we just did a paving job and striping job, so we have fairly good information. Of course, every job is different. Hopefully, when we take bids it will come down some. I always like to estimate high.”

The proposal was met with positive, supportive comments from the board.

Ward 6 Aldermen David Phillips expressed his excitement several times throughout the conversation.

“A lot of the improvements have come from good, private investors in the downtown area,” Phillips said. “My feeling is, if we invest in the infrastructure in that downtown area, we can create the soul of Brookhaven — not necessarily the economic engine, but it is the soul.”

Mayor Joe Cox agreed with Phillips’ sentiment.

“If you’re going to change the striping to one-way, it’s a perfect time to resurface those streets,” Cox said.

After the board approved the proposal, Holmes began discussing a timeline for the project. Holmes predicted that he would be finished with the official plans and estimates by the middle of October, but recommended the board hold off bidding out the project.

“I don’t think this is a project we want to get started on in October,” Holmes said. “With the holidays, activities and parades occurring from then to the end of the year, I don’t think it would be a good idea. I think we should work as hard as we can to get everything ready, bid out the job in December and shoot to start in January, weather pending.”

The board agreed with Holmes and asked that he begin drawing up the official plans for the downtown renovation project.