For more than 20 years, Pine and McCandless residents, business owners and officials have been talking with state engineers about what could be done to make the Wexford Flats business district safer, less congested and prettier.

Starting next summer, the corridor along Route 19 from the top of Pine Creek Hill in McCandless to North Chapel Drive in Pine will get a makeover that is expected to be completed in 2010.

That section of Route 19, known as Perry Highway, will be widened and resurfaced, a center turning lane will be added, new sidewalks will be installed and new landscape standards will be put in place.

"We want to make the road have more of a community feel and have it meet both functional and aesthetic considerations," said Todd Chambers, owner and landscape architect for Chambers Design Associates, which came up with new landscape standards for the highway that were adopted this spring by Pine and McCandless.

The $11.6 million project will get started in late summer 2009 when the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation begins widening Route 19 from 42 feet to 62 feet so that it has four 11-foot-wide lanes and one 14-foot-wide center turn lane.

"The project was originally started because of the safety concerns in the area," said Shaun Werner, PennDOT project manager for the Route 19 construction. He said a number of accidents have occurred on the highway, and the center turn lane is expected to improve safety.

PennDOT will start acquiring the rights of way needed for the project on more than 100 properties in Pine and McCandless this summer, Mr. Werner said.

Although businesses will benefit from the safer roadway, Mike Flumer, store manager of Zoresco Equipment Co. on Perry Highway, said they may lose customers while work is being done.

"I'm sure it's going to affect them dramatically," Mr. Flumer said. "People are going to want to steer clear of Route 19."

After the road construction is completed, the two municipalities will plant trees and shrubs along the roadway to make the strip of Perry Highway feel more like a community boulevard rather than a busy thoroughfare running along strip malls and commercial areas.

The new streetscape and landscape standards came from a study funded by the two municipalities, the North Pittsburgh Community Development Corporation and the Northern Allegheny County Chamber of Commerce.

Before the new standards were approved, a 15-foot buffer zone was required between businesses and the roadway, said Mr. Chambers and Scott Anderson, director of code administration and land development in Pine. If that requirement were kept in place after the road widening, businesses would lose land, which could cut into their parking space.

Under the new streetscape and landscape standards, existing businesses will not be required to have a buffer zone, said Bruce Betty, McCandless land use administrator. New developments, however, will be required to have a buffer yard of three, eight or 13 feet.

Chambers Design Associates came up with a list of trees, shrubs and flowers that businesses will be able to plant in the buffer yard areas. Although businesses will have to pay for their own plants, the hope is that many businesses will choose to have a buffer area, and the trees, shrubs and flowers planted will offer motorists a more scenic drive.

The project will be the first step toward making the Perry Highway corridor in McCandless and Pine more aesthetically pleasing and more pedestrian friendly, Mr. Chambers said.

"You have to envision what you want the place to look like down the road," he said. "Over the next 50 years, we want to direct [the corridor] to be more like a boulevard and have it be a place where people can gather more so than they do now."