MIDTOWN NEIGHBORHOOD NEWS
May 1996
Message from the President
It was good to see so many of you at our meeting on May 21st—even with our revised starting time for that night. I expect to be out of town for some of the meetings this summer, but I know David, Margaret, and our loyal troops will keep things going.
The goal for our park is to have as much of it completed as possible prior to school beginning again in August. Our business survey may be put on hold, as the SPIN program has been advised that we must have volunteers participating in order to carry out the survey. Only one person volunteered at the May meeting—if anyone else is interested in assisting in this project, please call me at 327-4733 or call Connie Brannock at 884-2864. Thanks for your support and wonderful energy.
Angel of the Month:
Dick Cummins for sharing his time and expertise in installing a drip irrigation system for the baby trees on Seneca. Special Halo of Honor goes to Harlan Marr and David Kha for giving up their Saturday morning as well. We thank you. The trees thank you.
Pima Street Widening
For those of you who don’t yet know, Pima Street is slated to be widened in July of 1998. $3.5 million in bond funds will go into the project. The current design looks very much like Pima east of Craycroft: sidewalks, four wide traffic lanes with a central turn lane, ultra-bright street lights, sewage and runoff improvements, and some landscaping.
The Pima Street Advisory Council, a coalition of neighborhood associations lining Pima Street, has formed to ensure community input into the project. Our concern is with two things 1) the safety and well being of the families living on Pima Street, and 2) the identify of our neighborhood.
Neighbors living east of Craycroft on Pima report greatly increased speeds on the newly constructed part of the road. Since traffic on Pima is already dangerously fast, the Coalition is looking at ways to augment the current design to slow down rather than speed up, traffic. We are proposing the following: Keep the sewage and runoff improvements, put in lighting better suited to a residential street, narrow the traffic lanes somewhat in order to widen the sidewalks, put a landscaped traffic median in the central turn lane with turn-off points every 600 feet (or a distance to be determined by Traffic Engineering), and put in lots more landscaping on both sides of the street. The intended effect: a tree-lined boulevard that signals to cars traveling through that they are in a residential neighborhood and need to slow down. These changes in the design will not raise the cost of the improvements. For the same amount of money we can get a Pima Street that looks like Speedway, or a Pima Street that looks like a tree-lined residential street. For more information, or if you would like to help out with the Advisory Council, contact Margaret at 323-5049.
What is Your Vision?
"Vision" according to Websters, is "the act or power of imagination."
What does "vision" mean to you?
What vision do you hold for yourself and your family’s future? Your neighborhood’s future? Your city’s future?
Give it some thought.