Side Streets ~ Neighborhood people and issues

Archive for the 'Drake Power Plant' Tag

PAVED STREETS, SIDEWALKS AND A GARDEN BRING MILL STREET UP-TO-DATE

April 20th, 2012, 11:12 am by

This diagram is the plan for a community garden in the Mill Street neighborhood. A plumber will build an irrigaiton system then volunteers will install 60 raised beds and other amenities.

Mill Street is one of my favorite neighborhoods — a working class, industrial area south of downtown with about 150 small homes, many built in the 1890s, and 30 or so businesses.

It’s bisected by railroad tracks and sits in the shadow of the Drake Power Plant with its piles of coal and constant train traffic.

Mill Street is an authentic blue-collar neighborhood with plenty of character: gravel streets, missing sidewalks and colorful residents.

That’s right. This neighborhood less than a mile from the trendy restaurants, towering bank buildings and nightclubs of downtown still has gravel streets.

“It’s a neighborhood that was kind of left behind,” said John Himmelreich, neighborhood activist.

Some of its rough edges, however, are being smoothed away thanks to the work of folks like Himmelreich and others. Today, gravel is disappearing under pavement paid for by Community Development Block Grants. Curbs, gutters and sidewalks are being installed along with improved drainage systems and streetlights.

And, in a couple weeks, Mill Street will get a community garden.

We’re talking an irrigated, fenced, organic garden with 60 raised beds, a tool shed and compost area and maybe even a picnic area and outdoor kitchen.

“We’re getting in our time machine and heading 115 years into the future,” Himmelriech joked.

Volunteers led by Larry Stebbins and his Pikes Peak Urban Gardens are building the garden, backed by a $27,000 grant. The largest chunk will pay Colorado Springs Utilities a $9,200 fee to tap into the city water system and for a plumber.

Fencing also is a major expense, along with the lumber, the “grade A” topsoil and manure for planting.

When it’s done, folks will pay $15 a year for water and insurance and just grow.

Larry Stebbins of the Pikes Peak Urban Gardens

All these improvement might never have happened if not for events in 1999 when civic leaders tried to build a $6 million facility to centralize city services for the homeless.

Then Utilities announced it would build a 500-foot-long railroad spur and store coal cars along Mill Street.

Residents organized, fought the shelter and won. The rail spur was built but even it provided benefits when 1.5 acres of cleared land was returned to the neighborhood and used to build affordable housing.

The neighborhood unity had a lasting impact. And Stebbins believes the garden will only help.

“The garden is in walking distance for most of the neighborhood,” Stebbins said. “It will bring the neighborhood closer together as they work and share and grow food.

“It’s going to be a beautiful garden.”

It will be just like the neighborhood. Some of it will be nice and new.

With a little dirt under the nails.

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GEAR-JAMMING FOOLS MAY SILENCE TRAIN HORNS

December 5th, 2010, 12:00 pm by

Railroad crossings have nearly been eliminated in Colorado Springs.

There are two in the Mill Street neighborhood — at Las Animas and at Sierra Madre streets, near the Drake Power Plant.

Another is not far away at South Royer Street, just north of East Las Vegas Street, on the edge of the Hillside neighborhood.

 The city is conducting a survey of public opinion regarding the Royer crossing. See it here. 

(NOTE: The electronic survey was shut down Dec. 17. But it will still accept mail-in surveys for a short time. To receive a hard copy of the survey, call 385-5877 or use the email contacts shown on the webpage.) 

It’s studying whether to close the crossing after 25 accidents since 1975 and several near tragedies. About a dozen people have been hurt but no one has died in the wrecks. Yet.

A truck became stuck on Nov. 11, 2010, trying to cross the railroad tracks on South Royer Street. The truckdriver ignored signs that closed the street to truck traffic due to the danger of becoming high-centered on the tracks.

The city of Colorado Springs installed signs warning of the danger to trucks trying to cross the tracks on South Royer Street after a string of incidents. But truckdrivers repeatedly ignore the warnings and try to cross, often getting stuck on the tracks. There have been 25 wrecks since 1975 at the crossing and a dozen injuries, but no deaths.

 Recently, trucks and buses have become stuck on the crossing because of its steep grade. 

The guys at nearby  Harris Used Parts have come to the rescue of stuck trucks several times. They use a forklift to lift the trucks. Usually, they say, they can dislodge the trucks.

A forklift driver from Harris Used Parts tried to lift a truck stuck on the railroad tracks on South Royer Street on Nov. 11, 2010. He was unable to free the truck.

The survey is the beginning of a community discussion about the crossing and whether it should be closed or moved to a safer location, said Dave Krauth, the city’s principal traffic engineer.

It could lead to the city simply closing the crossing, which gets about 5,000 cars a day and about three dozen trains, or relocating it further west.

The problem with the crossing is the steep pitch of Royer on the south side from Las Vegas Street.

Krauth said it is a 15 percent grade. It drops off so sharply that low-riding trucks scrape and get caught on the tracks.

Fixing the problem would require raising the road about four feet and cost $1.5 million, minimum, Krauth said.

It would be easier to simply close it and rebuild a new crossing a mile or two west.

There would be a huge fringe benefit for nearby residents in Hillside. Any new crossing would be required by federal law to incorporate the latest crossing guards, lights, sensors and safety devices.

As a result, the crossing would qualify as a quiet zone. Engineers in passing trains would no longer be required to routinely blast their horns, which register at about 100 decibles, rattling houses, windows and eye-teeth.

Here’s a link to a story about the crossing in September 2005 after a semi-truck got stuck and smashed there. It followed a similar truck-train encounter in July 2005.

In December 2009, a tour bus became the latest victim of the crossing. Read about it at this link.

Here’s what we wrote after a truck got stuck on Nov. 11, 2010.

Here’s a look at the scars in the pavement from trucks stuck across the tracks:

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