Photo credit: Design by MASS Design Group

Officials are confident that the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial will improve the safety and atmosphere in its part of The Boston Common.

The grand opening for The Embrace, a sculptural tribute designed by Hank Willis Thompson to King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, is set for Jan. 13, though the space around the memorial won’t be open again to the public until a few weeks later.

While designers are aiming to keep the historic 1965 Freedom Plaza, where the memorial is situated, mostly intact with a few small additions, A1 Boston Police Captain Robert Ciccolo thinks that the monument will make the plaza busier and thus safer.

The chance for more substantive improvements, such as addressing light pollution and intra-park connectivity, may come as The Common goes through wider renovations.

Greg Ball, director of digital strategy and production for Embrace Boston, said the company hadn’t conducted crowd-size estimates for the unveiling ceremony or subsequent tourism, but planners are apparently confident that the original plaza won’t require any major changes to accommodate the new foot traffic drawn by the sculpture.

“We’ve been planning extensively for months to make sure the ceremony goes smoothly at what was once an active construction site. We’re going to have tents, places to sit and televisions for people to see it elsewhere. We’re north of a thousand people on invitations alone to the ceremony, not counting the public,” he said.

Embrace Boston expects the monument to be open to the public in early February, although it could be sooner if reconstruction goes well. Workers need time to take down fences and reconstruct landscaping and fixtures uprooted during installation. The only important change to the plaza, except The Embrace, will be new additions to the plaza’s list of civil-rights leaders.

“There’s going to be a little bit of a change with the placement of the memorial, but it’s not a radical reconstruction. We want people to really come and take it in as a piece of the city. I think in time it will become a remarkable piece that people will remember Boston for,” said Ball.

There’s been some griping from residents over the years about the loss of green space on The Common and the harsh lighting of its eastern stretch, and that’s not likely to stop with this project. Despite the increase in foot traffic and lack of significant changes to the plaza. Ciccolo says he welcomes the sculpture.

“Where there are people, there are problems. High-traffic areas of the common require more of our attention, but I’m a firm believer that positive activity displaces negative activity. Unused spaces attract that negative activity. The MLK memorial opening will bring more positive activity to The Common,” he said.

That’s not to say that improvements can’t be made. Mayor Michelle Wu pledged in October to devote more than $23 million to revitalizing the park through the Boston Common Master Plan. Extensive repairs to existing walls and sidewalks will accompany new additions to its connective network. Residents looking for larger changes than the plaza reconstruction may find them in that initiative.

“A lot of the Common borders on residential space,” said Ciccolo. “We have to balance nighttime safety with concerns of light pollution and power conservation. There’s an ongoing conversation about where lighting is appropriate and at what levels. As far as architecture is concerned, creating open, active spaces is the Police Department’s main priority.”