Side Streets ~ Neighborhood people and issues

Archive for the 'Parker Street' Tag

CHESTNUT STREET BYPASS GETS REDRAWN; CHECK IT OUT

January 8th, 2012, 11:30 am by

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This drawing shows the proposed north section of the Chestnut Street bypass at Fillmore Street with a new exit ramp from southbound Interstate 25.

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This drawing of the proposed Chestnut Street bypass will be unveiled Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012, as a public meeting at the El Paso County Citizens Service Center, 1675 W. Garden of the Gods Road

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Here's a closer look at the plans for Parker Street, which becomes a dead-end in front of Ruth and Joe Wagner's home. Seven homes and two gas stations will be bought and demolished to make room for the bypass.

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Here's a look at the properties to be bought and demolished to make way for the Chestnut Street bypass.Here's an overview of the project from the city's website.

In September, city engineers riled up residents of Parker Street in the Mesa Springs neighborhood when they unveiled plans for rerouting Chestnut Street to unclog a dangerous intersection with Fillmore Street and Interstate 25.

Back to the drawing board they went and now they are back with refined plans.

Here's an overview of the project from the city's website.

The new design for the Chestnut Street Bypass will be formally unveiled at a public meeting scheduled 5-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 10, at the El Paso County Citizens Service Center, 1675 W. Garden of the Gods, Room 1019. (Use the west entrance.)

Hopefully it won’t get testy like the September meeting.

Folks were cranky because the original design showed Parker becoming a cul de sac with a poorly thought-out access lane for two houses stuck at the end.

Some felt the city had yanked them around, telling them one day to look for a new house because they were in the path of the bypass; then they were told later they were staying put.

Some felt the city was ignoring their need to be able to park in front of their homes.

A couple homeowners pleaded to be bought out by the city because they are convinced the project will ruin their property values and they would rather move than get left behind.

It seems the city has done a better job communicating with neighbors about the revised plan. Those who have seen previews are a tad happier with the new drawings.

 In the new plan, there is room for cars to get all the way down Parker and turn around, unlike the original plan.

“It’s better than the previous version,” said Ruth Wagner, whose house will be at the end of Parker Street’s cul de sac.

“We won’t be backing down the street to our house,” she said, referring to the September drawing. “That was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. In this plan, we’ll have a parking area. It’s totally changed.”

Other neighbors echoed Ruth’s opinion that the revised design looks better.

But all seem to dread a year of brain damage once construction starts in the spring with the demolition of seven houses and two gas stations.

When it’s done, some worry about the noise they’ll have to endure from the traffic that will zip up and down the bypass to the large American Furniture Warehouse store to the south.

Others expect to be frustrated at their loss of direct access to Fillmore Street.

This is a 2009 graphic showing plans at the time to extend Centennial Boulevard.

Some fear the bypass will be a favorite short-cut route and wonder why the city doesn’t complete the roughed-in southern leg of Centennial Boulevard to Van Buren Street or even to Fontanero Street.

I asked Mike Chaves, acting city engineer, about the neighbors’ concerns. He said the city has tried to respond to all concerns about the bypass.

“We’ve met with most of the residents,” he said. “We want to give everyone a final view to show where we’re headed and hopefully answer any questions.”

I wrote about plans to extend Centennial Boulevard in this 2009 blog.

Follow this link to my September column about the unhappy Parker Street residents.

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81-YEAR-OLD MRS. SMITH AND HER BAD HIP CAN PARK IN THE ALLEY!

September 18th, 2011, 11:30 am by

Harold and Phyllis Smith met in Victor, where she grew up the daughter of a gold miner in Winfield Scott Stratton‘s Independence and Cresson mines.  

They married in 19445 and moved to Colorado Springs where he worked as a mortician and then laying wood floors. She worked at Penrose Hospital for years.  

In the mid-1950s, they built a house on the north edge of town on Parker Street and raised two daughters. Harold and Phyllis lived there 50-plus years until his death in 2010.  

Phyllis Smith, 81, is upset with a city plan to turn Parker Street into a dead end, leaving her and another neighbor stranded on a narrow access road, unable to even park in front of their homes.

 

Under the city plan, unveiled at a recent public meeting, Parker Street would become a cul de sac and Chestnut Street would veer west, bypassing a dangerous intersection at Fillmore Street and Interstate 25. Two houses beyond the end of Parker would access their homes by a narrow road.

 

The tidy little house is full of memories. But Phyllis is ready to sell it to the city and let it be torn down rather than suffer through what city engineers have planned for her.  

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Engineers want to re-route Chestnut Street to bypass a dangerous intersection at Fillmore Street and Interstate 25.  

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 The plan, as outlined by city engineers at a recent neighborhood meeting, calls for five houses to be bought and removed on the east side of Parker to allow Chestnut to swing west. It will cross Fillmore at a new traffic signal and jog back to the east to reconnect with its original alignment.  

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Parker, meanwhile, will become a long dead end — a cul de sac in fancy terms.  

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 That’s bad enough.  

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 Even worse is what the plan would do to Mrs. Smith and her next-door neighbors, Ruth and Joe Wagner.  

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Both houses will sit beyond the end of Parker. To reach their driveway, the Wagners will drive past Mrs. Smith’s home on a tiny access road.  

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To reach her garage on the alley behind her house, Phyllis Smith, 81, must climb 19 stairs. She said it's too hard, especially after her broken hip and multiple surgeries. She can't get her groceries in the house or easily reach her car. So she parks in front of her house.

 

Phyllis Smith loves her home, but she'd rather sell and let it be torn down than suffer through what the city has planned for her and Parker Street.

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Phyllis Smith's house on Parker Street. Next door, obscured by the spruce tree, is the home of Ruth and Joe Wagner. To get out of their gravel drive, the Wagners would have to back down the access road, past Mrs. Smith's house.

 

 

Here's a rough map of the city's plan to reroute Chestnut Stree to bypass a dangerous intersection at Fillmore Street and Interstate 25. It involves buying and demolishing at least five houses on Parker Street and more on Chestnut.

 

City Councilman Tim Leigh, who attended the meeting. He was not impressed with the engineers — “they seemed to be arrogant” — or their plan.
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“I think it’s a horrible plan,” Leigh said. “They are trying to push a plan too quickly when they have better options. It’s government gone bad. It’s out of control. I’m going to try and stop it.”
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Mike Chaves, acting city engineer, insists everyone is overreacting a tad.
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 “The meeting was to get peoples’ concerns so we can address them,” he said. “Nothing is final. We don’t have an exact plan.
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 “The drawings were rough and schematic. We’re going to make sure people have adequate access.”  

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 Adequate for an 81-year-old with a bad hip, by gosh! 

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The five houses in the box on the right would be bought by the city and demolished while the two on the left would be left beyond the end of Parker Street, accessible by a narrow road and the alley.

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MESA SPRINGS WILL BE DOING THE PARKER STREET SHUFFLE

July 17th, 2011, 11:00 am by

I feel sorry for the folks in the modest Mesa Springs neighborhood. It’s boundaries, generally, are Fillmore Street on the north, Interstate 25 on the east, Uintah Street on the south and, eventually, Centennial Boulevard will be its western border once the extension is completed.

And that’s the problem. Mesa Springs has lived with construction turmoil all around it for years.

Mesa Springs is a small neighborhood west of Interstate 25, south of Fillmore Street and north of Uintah Street.

It was at Ground Zero for the COSMIX expansion of I-25 and erection of a massive sound barrier wall. That project brought tons of extra traffic down its main drag, Chestnut Street, as commuters seeking to dodge construction went racing back and forth.

Then the neighborhood’s character was changed with the addition of a major furniture store, which also added traffic volume to the area.

On its western edge, it watched as bulldozers began carving in the extension of Centennial and construction of new homes. But that project lurched to a halt leaving the road unfinished and many empty houses.

Now, it’s staring down the barrel of another major project. I call it the Parker Street Shuffle. The city is planning to close Chestnut at Fillmore. If you look at this aerial photo, you see why.

It’s not a simple intersection. It’s a convoluted mess thanks to the entrance and exit ramps of I-25 which converage at the spot.

Further complicating the dangerous intersection is the traffic trying to get in and out of two gas stations and the impact of motorists roaring down the steep incline of Fillmore from the west.

The intersection has long needed to be rebuilt. The entire Fillmore bridge needs to come down, for that matter, and the ramps widened and lengthened.

Anybody have a spare $50 million? Here’s a look at the entire mess from FlashEarth.com.

Didn’t think so.

And the city doesn’t have the $14.5 million it would take to bury Chestnut under Fillmore and keep it open.

But thanks to the one-cent sales and use tax that funds the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, an extra $6.5 million exists to make changes at Chestnut.

Here’s the preliminary plan: close Chestnut at Fillmore and build a bypass west around the nasty intersection via Parker, which becomes a long cul de sac. It will require buying a couple houses on Parker but the rest of the route will cross vacant land.

This is the tentative design for the plan to close Chestnut Street at Fillmore Street and reroute it west via Parker Street.

The Colorado Department of Transportation bought five houses on Chestnut a few years ago anticipating the eventual reconstruction of the Fillmore bridge.

And today CDOT is negotiating to buy the two gas stations to clear the intersection altogether.

The city expects to announce the date this week of a public meeting on the Parker Street Shuffle. If all goes well, construction could begin in the summer of 2012.

Follow this link to a May 21, 2011, story by Debbie Kelley about the project.

For the Oct. 3, 2010, paper, I wrote this column on Mesa Springs.

Here’s a blog I wrote in October 2010 on the project.

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Aren’t You Glad You Don’t Live on Parker Street?

October 3rd, 2010, 12:00 pm by

Just be glad you don’t live on Parker Street.

The next couple years, life is going to change and folks there may not like it too much.

It’s no fault of their own. They are just unlucky to live near a major traffic bottleneck where Fillmore Street intersects Chestnut and Interstate 25.

It’s a mess. You can see the intersection below on FlashEarth.com:

To address the nasty spider web of streets converging there, the city has conducted an extensive study of the corridor. Check it out at this link.

On the web site, you’ll find links to seven alternatives considered by Colorado Springs traffic engineers. They run the gamut from simply widening Fillmore to six lanes to closing Chestnut Street to building a bypass to loop Chestnut traffic around the intersection.

The engineers are leaning toward the design shown below in black. It is “Alternative 6″ and it involves building a bridge to carry Chestnut under Fillmore as well as a bypass over to Parker.

To get help in deciding, the city’s traffic engineers want your opinion. They have posted a survey online and want you to let them know your thoughts.

Here’s a link to the Fillmore Street Corridor Transit Study.

If enough millions can be found to build the project, it would begin soon.

Tim Roberts, senior transportation planner, said he hopes to have design work underway in 2011-12 and construction in 2013-14.

There’s a sense of urgency because the city hopes to finance the bulk of the project with its share of the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority sales tax revenue. The money the tax generates for capital improvements is scheduled to expire in 2014. The Fillmore project would be the last major project built with the funds.

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